Weekly Rewind: 5/15/26
Policymakers Move to Ban Private Equity From Youth Sports, and more.
By Zachary Hagen-Smith and ReThink Trade
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.
Policymakers Move to Ban Private Equity From Youth Sports
On Wednesday, Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Chris Deluzio introduced the Let Kids Play Act, a bill that would ban private equity and predatory financial practices from youth sports. As Wall Street has started to consolidate the $40 billion youth sports business, costs for families have skyrocketed, climbing by nearly 50% over the past five years. “No kid should have to quit a sport because private equity has made it too expensive,” former FTC chair Lina Khan noted. “It’s great to see this bill take on the vulture investors preying on families.”
This bill’s introduction comes on the heels of last week’s USA Today investigation into Black Bear Sports Group, a private equity-backed conglomerate that has been buying up youth hockey rinks and teams across the Northeast and Midwest, using its growing control to push families into a costly pay-to-play youth hockey system with higher fees and fewer local options. “They aren’t trying to optimize the kids’ experience or the families’ experience,” Sen. Murphy said of Black Bear on Wednesday. “They are using youth sports to get rich.” A recent More Perfect Union video also shone a spotlight on how Black Bear and other Wall Street giants squeeze working families out of youth sports and turn them into a luxury for the wealthy.
Wednesday was far from opening day on this front. In April, Rep. Deluzio hosted a public hearing on rising costs in youth sports featuring Economic Liberties’ Senior Legal Fellow Katie Van Dyck. Last month, Van Dyck also released a major report documenting how big money has invaded all manner of sports, from the little leagues to the big leagues. We’ll be keeping a close eye on all things sports as policymakers continue to fight to put players and communities over Wall Street profits.
Democrats Proposing New Trade Approach
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and 28 original Democratic cosponsors introduced the Fair Trade for Working Families Resolution on Thursday of this week. The resolution presents a Democratic Party vision for trade policy that is clearly distinguished from President Trump’s current damaging tariff chaos, as well as the failed neoliberal model championed by Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
The resolution lays out a vision for an American trade policy explicitly designed to support for working families, Main Street businesses, and family farms. This contrasts with the old neoliberal model that concentrated corporate power, gutted U.S. manufacturing, and undermined our capacity to produce essential goods and Trump’s on-and-off tariffs, which large corporations are exploiting to price-gouge consumers, while 89,000 American manufacturing workers have lost their jobs since Trump returned to office.
DeLauro’s Fair Trade for Working resolution sets 10 priorities for American trade policy. It enumerates what must and must not be in trade pacts, how to strategically use tariffs to boost our resilience and national security, and other policies needed to ensure more people can benefit from trade. It elaborates a trade policy that would support American workers getting paid good wages in new facilities nationwide, producing more quality goods and services for fellow Americans while strengthening U.S. security and resilience by diversifying the nations from which we import.
Polling shows that a majority of Americans distrust Trump’s chaotic and grifty approach to trade policy. But what Democrats are for on trade is not widely understood. The House and Senate Democratic leadership’s response to Trump’s approach has been a broadside against tariffs in general, even though the Biden administration generated the highest level of investment in U.S. factory construction in 30 years by employing high tariffs, combined with investment, tax, and procurement industrial policies — Trump has since terminated the industrial policies.
The resolution enjoys original cosponsorship from a diverse group of members, from Ranking Members to freshmen and New Democrats to Progressive Caucus leaders. It is also widely supported by unions and civil society organizations, including the American Economic Liberties Project.
AELP’s Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach joined Rep. Delauro and five other members of Congress, union representatives, and other civil society voices at a May 13 news conference to mark the introduction of the legislation.
Swing State Voters Are Fed Up with Surveillance Pricing
New focus group research that Economic Liberties released this week found that voters across key 2026 congressional battleground districts strongly oppose surveillance pricing — the use of personal data to charge people different, profit-maximizing prices. After a brief explanation, little awareness of the problem gave way to almost unanimous opposition. Participants described surveillance pricing as “unfair,” “discriminatory,” and “manipulative.” The participants argued that prices should be transparent and uniform for all consumers, broadly supporting a federal surveillance pricing ban.
“Surveillance pricing doesn’t just charge some people more than others; it destroys the very idea of a price,” said Director of State and Local Policy Pat Garofalo. “When every person sees a different number, and when those numbers shift minute to minute based on data people didn’t even know was being collected, a price tag becomes meaningless.”
Over 20 states now have bills in their legislatures aimed at cracking down on surveillance pricing. Just last week, the Colorado legislature sent a surveillance pricing ban to the governor’s desk. Last Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James led a rally in the Bronx, which Garofalo spoke at, supporting similar measures in New York State. Not all measures are created equal — as we covered in April, Maryland passed a faux surveillance pricing “ban” offering BigTech many loopholes — but the growing momentum shows lawmakers are beginning to recognize both the scale of the problem and the public demand for meaningful protections.
Quick Hits
House leadership agreed to a new version of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that now includes broad carve-outs for build-to-rent (BTR) and other single-family rental (SFR) models, despite initially reining in institutional investors’ footprint in housing. The revised bill, set for a vote next week, has frustrated the White House as well as both Republican and Democratic senators. As we broke down in a Monday thread, the BTR exemptions reflect the apex of Wall Street’s push to own everything while squeezing out Americans through rent hikes, junk fees, and other predatory practices. To learn more, check out our recent report about how institutional investors are doing just that in Atlanta, the nation’s largest site for corporate SFRs.
California had a blockbuster antimonopoly week. First up: the California Assembly Committee on Appropriations advanced the COMPETE Act, which would ban illegal monopolies in the state. Senior Legal Counsel Lee Hepner released a video with More Perfect Union, breaking down what’s at stake for Californians and how big business is trying to avoid oversight.
Also in Sacramento, Governor Newsom appointed former CFPB director Rohit Chopra head of California’s new consumer agency, and proposed a $14.3 million budget for the CA DOJ’s antitrust work. North of the Golden State border, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield is also beefing up state antimonopoly enforcement, seeking to double his department’s antitrust capacity.
On Monday, Rayfield joined California’s AG Rob Bonta, New York’s Letitia James, Nevada’s Aaron Ford, and Washington’s Nick Brown, for a roundtable on stopping illegal mergers and monopolies.
Economic Liberties released a new issue brief breaking down how local D.C. leaders can lower rising electricity bills for district residents by reining in utility monopoly Pepco, including by strengthening oversight, ensuring customers don’t pay for lobbying or corporate perks, and tying executive pay to affordability metrics.
Following last month’s jury verdict finding that Live Nation-Ticketmaster illegally monopolized ticketing and live events, this week we sponsored billboards across the country thanking state attorneys general for carrying on the case after the DOJ gave up. Up next week: Rep. Raskin and Sen. Blumenthal will lead a forum on the Live Nation case Monday, in advance of the court-imposed deadline for proposed remedies Thursday.
Roxanne Brown, International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), published a powerful op-ed describing a visit with Mexican workers by some of her members and called for major improvements to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Senior Fellow Hannah Garden-Monheit published an op-ed in the New Republic, breaking down how courts have helped rig the economy in favor of corporate power and how economic populists can fight back.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley introduced the Patients Before Monopolies Act, which would ban PBMs from owning pharmacies and anticompetitively raising prices.
Allegiant Air and Sun County Airlines on Wednesday completed their merger, marking the second loss of a low-cost airline in just days following Spirit’s shutdown.
ICYMI: Senior Legal Fellow Katie Van Dyck, on how a 65-year-old antitrust exemption jacks up costs for sports fans trying to tune into their games.