By Zachary Hagen-Smith & Luis Fernando Chavez
Welcome back to The Economic Populist’s Weekly Rewind. Every Friday, we’ll briefly recap the week’s biggest news, updates, and developments in the fight against corporate power.
Here’s what to know this week.
Senate Hands NCAA a Bailout At Athletes’ Expense
The Senate handed the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) a slam dunk against student athletes, passing the Protect College Sports Act in a 77-22 Monday vote. The bill, from Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, gives the NCAA and major conferences broad protection from antitrust law, letting the organization cap how much schools can pay athletes for their name, image, and likeness rights as well as restricting their ability to transfer. In other words, after the Supreme Court in 2021 unanimously ended decades of NCAA suppression of athlete pay and movement, Congress is poised to give the college sports cartel a new legal shield to return to its old monopoly ways.
The bill also let schools and conferences pool and sell media rights without antitrust scrutiny, potentially giving the biggest programs even more leverage over broadcasters and streaming platforms and higher prices for fans. Meanwhile, despite all the fuss about college sports spending around this bill, Congress rejected an amendment to cap multimillion dollar coaching salaries, leaving the spending arms race on coaches and facilities untouched while putting a ceiling on the one line of the athletic department budget that goes to athletes.
But the buzzer hasn’t rung yet. The bill needs to go the House, which now has a chance to intercept it and stop this NCAA bailout before it becomes law.
Trump Regulator Wants To Turn Your Phone Into a Casino
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is rushing to give prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket a federal shield from state gambling laws. On Tuesday, the agency submitted two rules on prediction markets to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: to exclude casino-style gambling from the swap definition and amend the swap definition to include bets on sports, elections, wars, and other events and classify them as “financial contracts.” By labeling only “casino-style” products as gambling, the CFTC is saying that the event contract bets placed on prediction markets are something else.
That’s not all. While states have historically held jurisdiction over gambling, the industry–friendly Trump CFTC, led by Chair Michael Selig who once represented cryptocurrency and prediction market clients, is seeking “exclusive jurisdiction” over these markets, with the support of Donald Trump Jr. who holds a paid advisory role and equity at Kalshi, while his venture firm, 1789 Capital, is one of Polymarket’s largest investors. Trump himself has said it is “critically important” for the agency to maintain exclusive authority over the industry. Amidst this legal battle between the states and federal government, just last week, a group of Senate Republicans met with the CEO of Kalshi.
Meanwhile, courts and policymakers are actively considering the legality of these markets and their bets — a conversation the CFTC’s actions are trying to circumvent. For more on the fight over prediction markets, check out Managing Editor Helaine Olen and Policy Analyst Ashley Nowicki’s latest piece for MS NOW.
Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Xi, Punts Major Trade Problems to Next Year
President Trump showered Chinese President Xi Jinping with pomp and flattery during last week’s state visit, but both countries’ outcomes documents made clear none of a long list of major U.S.-China trade or geopolitical conflicts were resolved. China’s ballooning trade deficit with the United States hit roughly $29.2 billion for the month of August.
Trump’s obsequious courting of Xi’s favor drew broad consternation. Trump greeted Xi when he arrived at Joint Base Andrews before a state visit packed with military honors, a White House arrival ceremony and a black-tie dinner. (Trump is the first sitting president in 60-plus years to personally greet a foreign head of state at landing, which Xi did not do when Trump visited China.)
China allowing Zoo Atlanta to lease two new pandas seems to be the main deliverable. Before the summit, the governments agreed to extend an existing trade truce by just two months, through January 10, 2027. This leaves unresolved major fights, including: ongoing tariff disagreements, China’s failure to purchase the U.S. goods it previously pledged to, China still limiting U.S. access to rare-earth minerals and magnets, the status of Trump’s waiver of export control on high-end AI microchip sales to China, and sanctions against Chinese trade-cheating in shipbuilding that Trump suspended last year.
Both countries listed $30 billion in products for a “Board of Trade” ostensibly launched to cut tariffs on non-sensitive products, but did not agree on cuts. The U.S. list includes toys, toasters, holiday decorations, and other consumer goods while China’s list includes some U.S. agricultural and manufactured products but not soybeans, the largest U.S. agricultural export to China.
Also notable, no progress on any of the non-trade issues. Nothing substantial materialized on AI beyond agreeing to call it “Super Intelligence” and opening what amounts to an email exchange for AI-related incidents. So where do we stand after all that? Mostly where we started.
Quick Hits
It has been a big week in the world of artificial intelligence. Surrounded by tech leaders, Trump relabeled AI “super intelligence,” while the next day the FTC started investigating major AI firms to see if they pose harm to consumers. Meanwhile, NVIDIA launched the biggest stock buyback in history, as it came to light that Anthropic is quietly trying to convince religious scholars that Claude — an LLM — is conscious. Meantime, former FTC chair Lina Khan’s New York Times op-ed outlines how we can begin to take on AI giants with laws already on the books.
Paramount Skydance officially closed its acquisition of Warner Bros.-Discovery, christening the combined company Skydance and hiring a co-CEO famed for cost cutting. Meanwhile, Hollywood leaders broadly doubt company head David Ellison’s leadership capabilities, while the company’s newly issued junk bonds are underperforming, adding additional financial pressure. For more on why this merger is a travesty for media and audiences, check out Senior Advisor Alvaro Bedoya’s conversation with Youtuber Ryan Geddie.
Pushback against data center secret deals mounts as South Bend banned city staff from entering into NDAs and Congress introduced bipartisan legislation invalidating these secret deals. Even Amazon is saying it’s no longer using NDAs for data centers. Also on the data center front: a New York Times investigation found Meta used a data center loophole to shave nearly $4 billion off its 2025 tax bill.
The Trump administration is launching a five-year Medicare pilot that would tie prices for certain high-cost Part B drugs to what 19 other countries pay, but the program has been sharply scaled back to cover just four manufacturers and is now projected to save $440 million instead of the $11.9 billion initially estimated.
It’s been a busy week in California as Governor Gavin Newsom wraps up the legislative session by signing corporate wish list items into law, including a bill to let private equity buy up law firms. He also signed the COMPETE Act, a bill we initially championed as a major antitrust reform, that has since been rendered toothless and unenforceable. There are a few victories, including a key utility accountability bill and a ban on grocery store restrictive covenants.
A Reuter’s investigation revealed that McDonald’s is using AI to recommend location-specific prices widening price gaps between even nearby outlets.
A New York federal judge has preliminarily blocked enforcement of a state law targeting algorithmic rent-fixing, finding that it may violate the First Amendment.
A proposed merger between two major Minnesota hospitals marks the third proposed merger by healthcare providers this year alone in the state.
Also in the North Star state: despite pushback from advocates and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the Minnesota PUC is standing by its decision to approve an Xcel rate increase that could cost customers an estimated $34 million more annually.
Google’s adtech antitrust case largely survived summary judgment, while Judge Amit Mehta separately dismissed publishers’ antitrust claims over Google’s AI Overviews.
California’s new CARS Act took effect, banning auto-dealer junk fees and bait-and-switch practices and giving consumers stronger protections when buying cars.
Our friends at Antimonopoly Counsel are challenging a proposed Visa-Mastercard settlement that would cut swipe fees by just 0.10% for five years while potentially entrenching the card networks’ duopoly.
Last week, as the Trump administration hosted the G20 Trade Ministerial in Milwaukee, Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach joined Wisconsin unions, farmers, and community members at a Teach In about trade policies that benefit working people to replace both neoliberal globalization and Trump’s oligarch-first tariff chaos.
The latest biography of Apollo co-founder Leon Black leaves a lot to be desired, according to Managing Editor Helaine Olen’s review in The American Prospect.
ICYMI: What’s at stake in the utility mega-merger getting lawmakers across the country up in arms? To find out, check out Senior Policy Analyst Sarah Meyerhoff’s breakdown of NextEra Energy’s proposed $67 billion takeover of Dominion Energy.