SCOTUS-Style Deregulation

In another example of how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has become all too willing to throw out well-established law, the rightwing Justices strongly signaled they are ready to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that protects members of independent government agencies from being fired for no good reason by the president.

The case focuses on Donald Trump’s capricious removal of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, but the eventual ruling will likely have significant consequences for many other independent bodies.

It is worth keeping in mind that many of these bodies are responsible for oversight of business activities Allowing a president like Trump to remove commission members without good cause will allow him to fill the bodies with individuals who are loyal to him and hostile to the mission of the agency. It amounts to backdoor deregulation.

Here are some of the key business regulators that would be affected.

Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is the main agency responsible for enforcing laws against financial market manipulation. Violation Tracker documents more than 3,000 cases against companies brought by the agency since 2000, with total penalties of more than $45 billion. The agency has fined JPMorgan Chase 30 times and collected over $2 billion in penalties.

Federal Trade Commission. The FTC, with responsibilities relating to consumer protection and antitrust, has collected over $18 billion from corporations. Among the biggest cases are the $5 billion penalty paid by Facebook for violating a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information; a $4 billion penalty paid by Volkswagen as part of the emissions cheating scandal; and the $2.5 billion penalty paid by Amazon for making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC, which regulates derivatives markets, has collected $32 billion in penalties in 830 cases against companies. The biggest cases include a $12.7 billion fraud judgement against FTX Trading Ltd. and Alameda Research and a $2.7 billion penalty against Binance Holdings.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before it was all but demolished by the Trump Administration this year, the CFPB collected nearly $18 billion in penalties against financial fraudsters. Wells Fargo paid over $4 billion in penalties in its bogus accounts scandal. Just about every other large bank was fined for a variety of harms perpetrated against their customers.

 Others include the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board.

Donald Trump has not waited for a green light from the Supreme Court to initiate his attack on these regulatory agencies. Unlike traditional pro-business conservatives, Trump is not interested in simply weakening these bodies to benefit corporations. He is also weaponizing some of them to carry out his ideological agenda.

Ardent MAGA loyalists appointed to head bodies such as the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission are using their authority to put pressure on Trump’s foes and promote Trump’s pet issues. A ruling by the Supreme Court affirming the president’s absolute control over the agencies will serve to legitimize Trump’s hijacking of the bodies.

In arguing the administration’s case before the Court, Solicitor General claimed that giving the president absolute control over the agencies will make them “more accountable.”

The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. The conversion of independent agencies into pawns of a ruthless president will derail their public interest mission, much to the delight of rogue corporations everywhere.

Can Federal Corporate Investments Be Used for Good?

Donald Trump takes pleasure in getting institutions of all kinds to bend to his will. That includes major corporations. In a move that contradicts the usual deference the public sector in the U.S. shows to big business, Trump has forced a group of large companies to allow the federal government to acquire significant ownership stakes.

These investments are being justified in the name of national security. The Administration is expected to use its holdings to influence the operating and financial decisions of the companies, which operate in areas such as rare earth minerals, semiconductors, steel, and nuclear energy.

It remains to be seen exactly what that influence looks like, but the willingness of Trump to press the private sector to serve his idea of the national interest raises the question of whether he could also get the companies to better serve the public interest.

The companies in the federal portfolio includes some with a significant record of misconduct. Take U.S. Steel, which received approval to be acquired by Japan’s Nippon Steel only after the parties agreed to grant the administration a so-called golden share, giving it extensive power over the company’s policies.

As shown in Violation Tracker, U.S. Steel has racked up over $300 million in fines and settlements since 2000, including $250 million for environmental offenses and $80 million for competition-related offenses. The biggest portions of these came from a 2020 settlement with the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Health Department regarding air pollution violations and a 2014 class action suit regarding steel price-fixing.

Or take Intel, which Trump pressured to sell a 10 percent stake to the administration for about $9 billion. Intel has paid out about $112 million in penalties, most of which came from a 2015 settlement of private litigation alleging it conspired with other tech companies not to hire each other’s employees, thus suppressing salary levels. The company also paid $5 million to settle a suit accusing it of denying overtime pay and failing to provide meal and rest breaks.

Then there is Westinghouse Electric, which was pressed to enter into a partnership with the administration to build new nuclear power plants. In exchange for arranging financing and assisting with permits, the federal government would eventually receive a share of profits and would obtain a significant equity stake if Westinghouse, which is now majority-owned by Brookfield Corporation, is spun off.

Westinghouse Electric has received more than $5 million in penalties, including cases involving unfair labor practices, environmental offenses, workplace safety violations, and nuclear safety infractions.

The willingness of Trump to pressure corporations on decisions relating to investment raises the question of whether he would also use his leverage to address these types of misconduct. That is probably unlikely when it comes to environmental offenses, given his tendency to demonize the EPA. But what about practices such as wage theft and workplace safety deficiencies? Trump, after all, likes to portray himself as pro-worker.

There might also be some appeal in attacking price-fixing if it helps Trump given the impression he is addressing the affordability crisis. He has already made noises about cracking down on price-fixing in the beef industry.

Whatever Trump ends up doing, any steps he takes to use federal investments to change corporate behavior would serve as a precedent that a more enlightened president could put to better use.

Is the DOJ Serious About Investigating Beef Price-Fixing?

Apparently shaken by the Democratic gains in this month’s elections, Donald Trump has changed his tune on the economy. He still tries to get us to believe everything is marvelous, but at the same time he has rolled out a series of proposals designed to give the impression he is addressing the affordability crisis.

Most of these initiatives do not amount to much. The rollback of tariffs on some food products is easing an aspect of inflation Trump himself caused. The idea of getting banks to offer 50-year home mortgages would result in modest monthly savings for borrowers while causing them to pay much more in interest over the life of the loan and slow the rate at which they build equity in their homes. It is unclear whether the deals he has been making with pharmaceutical companies will result in significant cost reductions for consumers. The suggestion that Obamacare subsidies be replaced with payments to health savings accounts would result in the proliferation of junk insurance policies and financial ruin for those with serious health conditions.

What these initiatives also have in common is that they do not challenge corporate interests in any significant way. The one possible exception to this is Trump’s call for a probe of price fixing in the beef industry.

Earlier this month, Trump put out a social media post asking the Justice Department to “immediately begin an investigation of into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through illicit collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation.”

So far, so good. But Trump went on to refer to “Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers,” suggesting that his real aim was xenophobic. A related White House press release was headlined “Trump Administration Cracks Down on Foreign-Owned Meat Packing Cartels.” The release went on to name what it called the Big Four meat packers—”JBS (Brazil), Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef”—noting that two of them “are either foreign-owned or have significant foreign ownership and control.” (National Beef is controlled by Brazil’s Marfrig.)

It is not surprising that Trump is willing to criticize foreign corporate interests when the country involved has been the target of his scorn because of the supposed mistreatment of its former president Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters mounted a January 6-style attack on the seat of government.

This is not to deny that the Brazilian beef giants have engaged in anti-competitive practices, yet there is no indication that their market behavior has been significantly worse than that of U.S.-based Cargill and Tyson Foods.

All four companies have been entangled in legal disputes over alleged collusion and price-fixing, yet those cases have involved private litigation rather than government enforcement actions. JBS has already paid out $160 million in settlements in class action suits filed in U.S. courts by different categories of beef purchasers.

Additional cases brought against JBS as well as Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef have been consolidated in a multidistrict action now centered in federal court in Minnesota. The litigation alleges that from at least 2015 the four companies agreed among themselves to reduce live cattle purchasing and slaughter volumes for the purpose and effect of increasing their margins.

The plaintiffs charge that the companies accomplished and perpetuated this agreement through collusion at trade association conferences and industry events between executives and key employees, and through ensuing collusive relationships. This anti-competitive activity, the plaintiffs say, caused them to pay artificially and illegally inflated prices for boxed beef, which in turn elevated prices for consumers.

It is not at all clear that the Trump Administration will be as aggressive as the plaintiffs’ lawyers in attacking beef industry collusion. Attorney General Pam Bondi responded to Trump’s tweet by saying an investigation was already underway. Yet the DOJ’s Antitrust Division has been less than dynamic under Trump 2.0. No significant price-fixing action against a corporation has been resolved this year.

The seriousness of the Administration’s move against the big meatpackers was also put into question by the ridiculous statements of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggesting that high beef prices are the result of reductions in the supply of cattle caused by diseased animals brought into the country by illegal immigrants.

In the end, the DOJ’s beef investigation may turn out to be no more effective in addressing affordability than any of the other gimmicks Trump has offered.

The Other Sins of the Big Greenhouse Gas Emitters

As the COP30 climate talks take place in Brazil, the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has just published its latest list of the corporations that contribute the most to the global warming crisis in the United States. Unfortunately, PERI warns that this version of the Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index may be its last.

That is because the Trump Administration, as part of its effort to dismiss the climate crisis as a hoax, has suspended the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Since 2018 PERI has collected facility data reported under the program and linked it to corporate owners in preparing its rankings of the biggest emitters.

This year’s index once again finds fossil-fuel based utilities, petrochemical producers, and petroleum refiners dominating the list. PERI points out that the top three companies (see below) are responsible for nearly 4 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from all sources.

It should come as no surprise that many of the top emitters also feature prominently on the Violation Tracker (VT) database of companies that have paid the most in regulatory penalties.

Yet that is not because they have been penalized significantly for their climate sins. Even before Trump 2.0, environmental regulations in the U.S. have largely ignored greenhouse gas levels. The companies at the top of the PERI list have, instead, been fined for other environmental offenses.

Vistra Energy, which tops the PERI rankings with over 86 million metric tons of annual CO2 emissions, has a total of $525 million in environmental penalties documented in VT. Most of that comes from a Clean Air Act settlement its power generation subsidiary Dynegy signed with the U.S. Justice Department, the EPA, and the State of Illinois designed to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants. PERI’s data shows that Vistra’s plants are emitting large levels of greenhouse gases in Illinois and elsewhere.

Number two on the PERI list is utility giant Southern Company, whose operations account for about 76 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Southern’s VT environmental penalty total is $207 million. Most of this comes from a settlement its subsidiary Alabama Power reached with the DOJ and the EPA also involving reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. That settlement dealt with emissions from the James H. Miller Jr. plant, which PERI shows accounts for the largest portion of Southern Company CO2 emissions, at over 16 million metric tons. That makes it one of the largest greenhouse gas sources in the country.

Third in the PERI ranking is another utility behemoth, Duke Energy, which accounts for about 73 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. Duke Energy’s VT environmental total is $2.5 billion. That figure reflects both air pollution and water pollution penalties. The latter includes a case in which three Duke subsidiaries pleaded guilty to nine criminal violations of the Clean Water Act at several of its North Carolina facilities and agreed to pay a $68 million criminal fine and spend $34 million on environmental projects and land conservation. Four of the charges were the direct result of the massive coal ash spill from the Dan River steam station.

The same pattern is seen in other top emitters on the PERI ranking, such as American Electric Power ($4.7 billion in environmental penalties) and Exxon Mobil ($2.2 billion).

Greenhouse gas pollution and “traditional” pollution go hand in hand. No amount of climate denialism or suppression of emissions data can hide the fact that the big fossil fuel companies remain a danger to the planet.

Taking Aim at Whistleblowers

Everyone in the Trump Administration seems hellbent on giving the president as much power as possible over nearly everything. Congressional Republicans are playing along.

Things are less clear in the courts, especially in the wake of the skeptical reception Trump’s tariffs just received in the Supreme Court. Yet there is a lower-profile judicial effort in the works that could further empower the executive branch at the expense of corporate accountability.

The effort concerns qui tam lawsuits filed by whistleblowers under the federal False Claims Act, which dates back to the Civil War era. The actions typically are brought by corporate insiders who expose fraudulent practices committed by government contractors in the provision of goods and services, especially healthcare.

Whistleblowers file their case on behalf of the federal government, and then one of two things will happen. The Justice Department can decide to take over the prosecution of the case, and the whistleblower receives a portion of any damages or settlement paid by the defendant. If the DOJ declines to intervene, the whistleblower can choose to pursue the lawsuit independently. Any financial recovery is then shared with Uncle Sam.

Both of those options may be in jeopardy. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the DOJ could choose to dismiss a qui tam case even if it initially decided not to intervene in the matter. The dissenting vote was cast by Justice Clarence Thomas, who used his dissent to question the constitutionality of the entire qui tam system.

Now an appellate court judge is seeking to make that view a reality. Judge James Ho of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a concurring opinion in a ruling that dismissed a qui tam case against Encompass Health Corp. for allegedly submitting false claims to Medicare.

Ho, appointed by Trump during his first term, urged his colleagues to revisit the constitutionality of qui tam by making the MAGA-style argument that whistleblowers should not be able to bring cases, given that they “are neither appointed by, not accountable to, the President.”

It is unclear whether Ho’s colleagues will go along with his suggestion, but it is troubling to think that other jurists will take up the call to abolish qui tam. Whistleblower lawsuits have played a major role in lawsuits exposing and punishing corporate fraud against the government and thus the public.

A substantial portion of the 3,000 False Claims Act cases we document in Violation Tracker were initiated by whistleblowers and taken over by the DOJ. When the DOJ declines to intervene, most qui tam cases collapse for lack of resources. Yet we document about two dozen that survived and which recovered substantial sums. For example, in 2023 Eli Lilly was ordered to pay $183 million in a qui tam case that accused the company of shortchanging the Medicaid program in its drug rebate calculations.

Preserving the ability of individuals to expose corporate fraud is especially important at a time like this, when the administration in power has exhibited an inclination to make prosecutorial decisions based on dubious criteria. Cases are being dropped, leniency deals are being offered, and pardons are being awarded to companies and executives with ties to the president and his family’s businesses.

If whistleblowers were to be blocked from initiating cases, more rogue corporations would go unpunished.

A New Climate Denialism?

For decades, federal and state laws have required corporations to disclose information about their activities that affect the public. ExxonMobil is now asking a federal court to allow it to ignore one of those obligations relating to the vital issue of climate change.

Exxon is suing the government of California over two laws enacted in 2023 that will require large companies to provide two forms of disclosure. S.B. 253 mandates that companies doing business in California with annual gross revenues above $1 billion disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. S.B. 261 requires that companies operating in the state with annual gross revenues over $500 million disclose climate-related financial risks and their mitigation efforts. The requirements take effect in 2026.

In its lawsuit complaint, Exxon adopts a belligerent tone, arguing that the laws compel it “to trumpet California’s preferred message even though ExxonMobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided.” At the same time, the company makes two preposterous claims.

The first is that it is unfair to base the disclosure rules on the size of corporations: “California may believe that companies that meet the statutes’ revenue thresholds are uniquely responsible for climate change; but the First Amendment categorically bars it from forcing ExxonMobil to speak in service of that misguided viewpoint.”

It is common practice to limit certain disclosure requirements to large companies. In this case it is especially appropriate, given that giant corporations such as Exxon, especially those in the fossil fuel business, clearly account for a disproportionately large share of greenhouse gas emissions. It takes quite a bit of chutzpah for Exxon to suggest it is being treated unfairly because it has an obligation that does not apply to a neighborhood coffee shop.

Also outrageous is the company’s claim that California has no right to require it to report on emissions that take place outside the state. Global warming is an international phenomenon. Greenhouse gas emissions do not stop at state or national borders.

What is troubling about Exxon’s attack on the California laws is that it suggests the company is backtracking in its stance on the climate crisis. For many years, Exxon was the leading espouser of climate denialism, going to great lengths to cover up its own role in the problem.

Eventually, Exxon stopped completely denying the existence of global warming. In its lawsuit complaint, the company states that it “understands the very real risks associated with climate change and supports continued efforts to address those risks.” Yet it alleges that under the California rules it “will be forced to describe its emissions and climate-related risks in terms the company fundamentally disagrees with.”

Exxon’s new position seems to be that, while it does not deny the existence of climate change, it denies that it bears substantial responsibility for it. That, in turn, implies that any climate mitigation efforts should not impinge significantly on its operations.

Taking this stance also allows Exxon to deny that it faces significant climate-related financial risks. In doing so the company probably feels emboldened by Trump’s insistence that climate change is a hoax and by his administration’s efforts to prop up the fossil fuel sector.

At some point, these delusions will collapse. For now, let’s hope the federal judge who hears Exxon’s case laughs the company out of court.

Banking and Genocide

Banks try to disavow responsibility for the misconduct of their clients, but that position has suffered a serious setback in a court in New York. A federal jury has just returned what is being called a landmark verdict against French banking giant BNP Paribas for complicity in the genocide committed by the regime of Omar al-Bashir in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The jury awarded $20 million in damages to three individuals, but it opened the door to further and much more costly legal action against one of the largest banks in the world on behalf of the tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees living in the United States.

BNP Paribas has been embroiled in controversy over its dealings with Sudan for the past decade. In 2015, after facing criminal charges of violating federal government economic sanctions against Sudan (as well as Iran and Cuba), the bank was sentenced to a five-year term of probation and ordered to forfeit $8.8 billion to the United States and to pay a $140 million fine.

In the new civil litigation, BNP Paribas was accused of propping up the Sudanese regime by providing letters of credit that allowed it to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Despite the bank’s previous guilty plea, its lawyers argued that there was no connection between its services and the genocide. They had the difficult task of separating admitted sanctions violations from the atrocities the sanctions were designed to stop.

The jury did not buy it, and the follow-on class actions are expected to go the same way. Bloomberg is estimating that BNP Paribas may end up paying out up to $10 billion in settlements.

BNP Paribas is not the only multinational bank that may face such costs. Among the more than 600 economic sanctions cases documented in Violation Tracker are numerous cases brought by federal and state regulators in the U.S. against other foreign banks for their activity in Sudan.

For example, in 2015 Germany’s Commerzbank agreed to forfeit $563 million, pay a $79 million fine and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for sanctions violations in Sudan and other countries.

In 2018 France’s Societe Generale paid $420 million in a case brought by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS).

In 2014 Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ paid $315 million to the DFS to resolve allegations of misleading regulators regarding its transactions with Sudan and other sanctioned entities.

In 2012 Britain’s Standard Chartered agreed to forfeit $227 million to the Justice Department for violations relating to Sudan and other sanctioned countries.

These banks and other financial institutions with similar penalties may not have had the same degree of involvement with Sudan as did BNP Paribas, but the fact that they were involved at all and faced criminal or civil charges would seem to make them possible targets for class action lawsuits.

The Sudan cases should serve as a reminder to major banks and other corporations that there will be a price to pay if they fail to comply with human rights norms in the pursuit of profit.

Exxon’s Bogus Shareholder Democracy

When thinking of the leading proponents of democracy, ExxonMobil is not a name that comes to mind. Yet the oil giant is using the rhetoric of democracy to promote a plan that will actually consolidate power in the hands of Exxon’s management.

The plan involves automatic voting by retail investors, a practice that was recently given a green light by the Trump Administration’s corporate-friendly Securities and Exchange Commission. It would work as follows: a company could ask individual investors to opt into a system by which their shares would be voted in support of management’s position on issues that come up at annual meetings.

Shareholders who do not wish to cast a vote can already assign that power to management through the proxy card they are sent in advance of each annual meeting. Many, however, neither vote nor send in the proxy. Exxon is apparently assuming that a significant number of investors would be willing to give management full control of their rights indefinitely.

Exxon leaves little doubt that its aim is to weaken shareholder activist groups, which have their own methods of collecting proxies to vote on policy issues that they themselves frequently submit for consideration at annual meetings. On its webpage about automatic voting, Exxon mentions by name a leading progressive shareholder group, As You Sow, complaining that it has a service that allows investors who support its principles turn over their votes. The company writes: “Our retail shareholders, who overwhelmingly support our board, have not had the benefit of such a service and, as a result, have for far too long been underrepresented at shareholder meetings.”

After taking another potshot at the activist groups, Exxon states: “Retail investors deserve to be heard. They didn’t buy our stock to sit on the sidelines. They bought it because they want strong shareholder returns, and they deserve a say in the company they own and the future they are funding.”

This is some shameless doubletalk. Exxon first makes a sweeping assumption about the opinions of shareholders who do not submit proxies. Then it tries to depict an arrangement in which people essentially give up their voting rights as a form of empowerment.

Exxon’s suggestion that it simply wants to do what the likes of As You Sow are doing ignores a fundamental difference. The activist groups are trying to hold the company accountable through votes on resolutions which are not binding and mainly serve to shine a light on retrograde corporate practices. Management, with its vast resources, wants to exploit the fact that many individual shareholders are not focused on the issues that come up in proxy resolutions. It seeks to take advantage of that indifference to make it easier for the company to defeat resolutions and to go on employing practices that harm workers, consumers, and communities.

It is also worth noting that shareholder activism is under attack. Earlier this year, Texas passed legislation that would effectively ban voting services such as the one used by As You Sow. A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the law while the matter proceeds to trial.

At the same time, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that his office has launched an investigation of the two leading proxy advisory services that advise institutional investors about shareholder resolutions.

Rightwing politicians and corporate executives are both seeking to restrain the efforts of activists to make companies more accountable. There is nothing democratic about that.

The Ellisons Prosper by Aligning with Trump

Numerous rich people are getting richer thanks to their connections to Donald Trump, but perhaps no one has gained as much as Larry Ellison and his son David. They control what is becoming one of the largest media empires the country has ever seen—and one that could very well serve as a multi-platform MAGA megaphone.

What is often overlooked is that the rise of the Ellisons was also made possible by a family fortune built to a significant extent on federal government contracts and that many of those contracts had a performance record that was something less than spotless.

Until recently, Larry Ellison was known mainly as the co-founder of the software producer Oracle Corporation. He was chief executive of Oracle from 1977 to 2014, and at age 81 he retains the titles of chairman and chief technology officer.

As Oracle grew over that period, so did Ellison’s lavish compensation package. That pay plus his large stake in the company have made him one of the wealthiest people in the world. The latest Forbes 400 list ranked him second, with a net worth of $276 billion.

Oracle does not disclose exactly how much of its revenue comes from government contracts, but USASpending shows that it takes in over $1 billion a year just for its federal healthcare-related services, much of that coming from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Oracle is one of four companies that received a $9 billion multi-year contract from the Pentagon for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.

Oracle has gone on receiving contracts despite the fact that in 2011 it had to pay $199 million to settle Justice Department allegations that the company failed to meet its contractual obligations to provide the General Services Administration with current, accurate and complete information about its commercial sales practices, including discounts offered to other customers, and that Oracle knowingly made false statements to GSA about its sales practices and discounts.

Oracle’s record has also been tainted by foreign bribery allegations. In 2022 it paid $23 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve allegations that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when subsidiaries in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and India created and used slush funds to bribe foreign officials. A decade earlier, Oracle had paid $2 million to settle a similar case involving improper payments in India.

These cases apparently were not an issue earlier this year when the Federal Communications Commission approved the acquisition of Paramount Global (CBS, Paramount Pictures, etc.) by Skydance Media, owned by the Ellisons. What was decisive, instead, was Paramount’s decision to enter into an extravagant settlement to resolve a baseless lawsuit filed by Trump against 60 Minutes. Once the merger was completed, the influence of the Ellisons could be seen in the decision to name right-leaning Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Now the combined Skydance Paramount is reported to be part of an effort to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. studio, and much more. At the same time, the Ellisons are involved in the deal Trump has been putting together to transfer ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American consortium.

It is difficult to imagine that the Ellisons would be enjoying all this good fortune if they had not aligned themselves closely with Trump over the past year. In Trump’s America, all the past sins of a corporation can be forgotten as long as tribute is paid to the occupant of the White House.

The FTC Bucks the MAGA Anti-Regulatory Crusade

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in limbo. The Environmental Protection Agency has been turned into a fossil fuel cheerleader. The Securities and Exchange Commission has drastically scaled back its enforcement activity. The Federal Communications Commission is focused on using its powers to attack perceived enemies of the Trump Administration.

Across the federal bureaucracy, agencies seem to be reshaping themselves in accordance with Donald Trump’s belief that regulation of business is evil. And now with the shutdown, those agencies are barely operating at all.

Yet there is one agency that bucked the trend and continued its mission of exercising oversight of corporate behavior: the Federal Trade Commission. Until the shutdown caused it, too, to suspend operations, the FTC has been engaged in conventional and even aggressive enforcement activity.

Most notably, the FTC recently announced the resolution of a case against Amazon.com for using deceptive methods to enroll consumers in its Prime service and then making it difficult for them to unsubscribe. As part of the resolution, Amazon was required to pay a civil penalty of $1 billion and provide $1.5 billion in refunds while also changing its practices.

The only other Trump 2.0 penalty that comes close in size was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s settlement in April requiring Discover Bank (now owned by Capital One) to pay $1.2 billion in restitution and a $150 million civil penalty to resolve allegations its overcharged credit card fees. The FDIC has announced no significant penalties since then.

In the period since Trump took office, the FTC has announced more than a dozen other resolved enforcement actions. After the Amazon case, the largest was a $100 million judgment against a company called Assurance IQ for the deceptive marketing of substandard health insurance plans. Among the other companies that have paid penalties to the FTC this year are Walmart, Walt Disney, and Match.com.

Other significant cases are still under way. In September, the FTC sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for engaging in improper arrangements with ticket brokers that ended up costing consumers billions of dollars in inflated prices.  In April, the agency sued Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices.

Along with consumer protection action, the FTC has been pursuing its responsibilities as an antitrust regulator. The agency has continued to pursue a lawsuit, originally filed in 2020 in conjunction with state attorneys general, that accuses Meta Platforms of using anti-competitive mergers to gain monopoly power in certain segments of social media.

The FTC recently sued Zillow and Redfin for entering into an agreement the agency says improperly reduced competition in the market for rental housing online advertising.

There have also been some dubious actions on the part of the FTC, especially an investigation of the advocacy group Media Matters for supposedly engaging in an illegal boycott of X. In August a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Media Matters, which argued that the case was politically motivated.

Also politically motivated was the Administration’s improper firing of the FTC’s Democratic commissioners.

On the whole, however, the FTC has not abandoned the aggressive enforcement posture it adopted during the Biden Administration under the leadership of chair Lina Khan. Hopefully, its approach will have some influence on those federal agencies carrying out MAGA-style anti-regulatory crusades.