Weekly Rewind: 6/26/26
The Prescription For America’s Healthcare Crisis? Break Up Big Medicine, and more.
By Zachary Hagen-Smith
— Economic Liberties is now on Instagram! Follow us here —
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.
The Prescription For America’s Healthcare Crisis? Break Up Big Medicine.
Healthcare in America didn’t become unaffordable by accident. At our Break Up Big Medicine summit on Thursday, an eclectic coalition of advocates — spanning physicians to lawmakers — laid out the truth: decades of consolidation and corporate greed created our crisis.
We will do a longer lowdown on the conference for you next week, but for now, know this: we discussed not just how compliant antitrust enforcers are letting big corporations and private equity swallow up our medical system, but what we can do to restore it to health. That includes not just our Break Up Big Medicine Act, which would ensure that the businesses that finance and manage healthcare don’t own the businesses that actually provide it, but proposals by our speakers, such as Senator Ron Wyden, who announced new legislation he’s introducing that would cap out-of-pocket Medicare costs.
Washington is getting the message that Americans — Democrats and Republicans alike — are incensed at the big corporations leeching off the U.S. healthcare system and that they want the situation fixed.
Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Shines Key Light on Workers and Small Businesses
Economic Liberties wrapped our Paramount-Warner town hall tour in New York and Atlanta last week, where — joined by Senator Cory Booker and Hollywood icon James Schamus in the Big Apple, Congressman Hank Johnson in ATL, and all stripes of workers and small businesses at both — we heard from those most impacted by this $110 billion mega-merger.
Many of the stories were familiar tragedies. One craft worker in Atlanta recounted helping “friends pack up and leave the state” after past mergers shipped production jobs abroad. A writer in New York had an entire TV show cancelled after the Warner merger was announced. A new report from Los Angeles County likewise found that the merger would be economically devastating, eliminating thousands of jobs nationwide.
Meanwhile, Paramount is trying to game the system. After the Justice Department (DOJ) cleared the way for its Warner acquisition, the Wall Street Journal revealed that staff investigators were leaning towards recommending a lawsuit to block it but that senior leadership signed off on the deal before they could even raise their objections. Another new WSJ bombshell: Paramount owners have funneled tens of millions of dollars to Trump over the last three years.
As the mega-merger collects antitrust approvals from the US as well as China and potentially the EU, it may seem like the bad guys have won, but the fight is far from over. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, and Booker are demanding the FCC prevent any closure of the acquisition before investments from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, which would make up 38.5% of the equity in the company, are fully reviewed. California attorney-general Rob Bonta is also still investigating the case.
As we continue to follow developments in the Paramount-Warner deal, listen to Economic Liberties Senior Adviser Alvaro Bedoya on WNYC where he explains what this merger means for ordinary people.
California Antitrust Fights Mount From Gas Stations to Legislature
A new lawsuit alleges that the corporate owners of over 1,700 California gas stations — including Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart, and Circle K — are using an AI pricing platform to collude and keep prices artificially high.
The core of the class action, filed by our friends at Simonsen Sussman LLP — whose cofounder Shaoul Sussman is an Economic Liberties board member — is Kalibrate, a digital platform that “relies on the data of competing gas stations to coordinate high prices.” They estimate that the software allows California stations to rake in an extra 6 to 30 cents per gallon. Each penny adds up to $134 million out of drivers’ wallets. This lawsuit comes on the heels of last year’s passage of the Preventing Algorithmic Price Fixing Act, a California bill from Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry that strengthens price collusion oversight. A big impact from a small state bill.
And Aguiar-Curry has more in the store. Her next project: the COMPETE Act, a state bill that would establish a California-level antitrust standard.
As monopolistic practices make life costlier and harder for working Californians and 99% of Golden State businesses across every sector, COMPETE offers a chance to modernize California’s 119-year-old antitrust law by making anticompetitive behavior from a single dominant company illegal under state law. It’s a generational opportunity to restore the innovation and cultural dynamism of the California dream. But big businesses want nothing to do with it. As our Senior Counsel Lee Hepner explained for More Perfect Union, the California Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbies are going to bat for the state’s biggest conglomerates.
The next step in the fight: a hearing on Tuesday, June 30 in California’s Senate Judiciary Committee.
Quick Hits
The White House is about to nominate a new antitrust chief, Adam Candeub, who now serves as general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. Where does he stand on the issues? Well, in a chapter of Project 2025 he wrote, Candeub expressed that antitrust work should fall mostly on state attorneys general rather than federal enforcers. If that wasn’t enough of a tell for where DOJ antitrust is heading, the department’s third top-ranking official is now directing staff to avoid antitrust trials completely.
President Trump pledged to sign the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would place restrictions on institutional investor homeownership, streamline permitting requirements, and authorize new affordable housing grant programs. But it’s future is now in limbo as Trump attempts to use it as leverage to push Congress to vote on controversial election regulations.
Illinois is the latest state to ban junk fees. On Thursday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Junk Fee Ban Act, which bans corporations from advertising fake prices that don’t disclose hidden fees.
A Consumer Reports investigation found that Uber and Lyft routinely charge different customers dramatically different prices for the same ride at the same time, often using AI-driven pricing and misleading “discounts” that appear designed to maximize profits rather than reflect genuine supply and demand.
At a Wednesday committee meeting, New York City Councilman Eric Dinowitz proposed new rules requiring schools to disclose their use of AI and report data breaches, modest transparency measures that fall well short of the moratorium needed to stop Big Tech from using students as guinea pigs. Also in the Big Apple: a hearing last week brought a citywide ban on surveillance pricing one step closer to reality.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed the Return on Equity Bill, which, if enacted, would alter governance on Return on Equity (ROE) — the guaranteed profit rate regulators allow utility shareholders to earn on infrastructure investments — by setting a default ROE determined by market rates rather than utilities’ investment.
Senators Mark Kelly and Elizabeth Warren penned a new letter to Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury, and US Trade Representative, demanding answers on the administration’s trade policies and their impact on domestic blue-collar jobs.
Oracle sued Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission after the state required large data centers to meet stricter credit rating and collateral requirements. For more on why taking it slow on data centers may be a good idea, check out Director of State and Local Policy Pat Garofalo’s new article on data center moratoriums.
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee on Thursday signed legislation banning restrictive deeds that block competitors from opening grocery stores, a major win for food access and competition in the grocery sector.
ICYMI: Communications Manager Allie Gross sat down with author Brendan Ballou to discuss his new book on how forced arbitration keeps companies beyond the reach of the law.
You want to win? Here is the messaging: The transnational shareholding class is the enemy of the American people. They are trying to destroy the buying power of our wages so they can enslave us to further their depraved decadent lifestyles. They will not take no for an answer. They will not negotiate. They must be eliminated.
Anything else loses.