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.
Mamdani Stands Up Against Amazon, With Drivers
The Knicks aren’t the only ones winning big in NYC this summer. Mayor Zohran Mamdani just scored a major point for working New Yorkers, endorsing a city bill that would set safety, training, and labor standards for delivery workers while also requiring companies like Amazon directly employ drivers rather than subcontract deliveries to third-party firms. This is huge: Amazon’s current delivery service provider model lets the company control drivers’ routes, workloads, and delivery quotas while keeping them as subcontractors, thus shielding the three-trillion-dollar company from responsibility for drivers’ working conditions. This has left drivers with lower pay and fewer paths to unionize. Meanwhile, drivers have reported being pushed to speed through routes and skip bathroom breaks; crashes near NYC last-mile facilities have indeed risen sharply.
Mamdani’s dunk on monopoly abuse follows a new lawsuit across the Hudson from New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, who last week accused Amazon of abusing its market power over its delivery network to suppress driver wages and prevent contractors from competing for workers. The complaint alleges that Amazon went as far as to use AI surveillance to retaliate against unionization efforts, fired organizing workers, and deployed drones near a facility where delivery drivers were attempting to unionize.
This is just the latest in Mamdani’s full-court press against corporate abuse. Last month, he adopted a “click-to-cancel” rule that prevents companies from locking New Yorkers into unwanted subscriptions, and also appointed former FTC Chair Lina Khan to lead the city’s Economic Development Corporation, an agency that has often taken the side of corporate interests, signaling a shift to instead prioritize working people and small businesses. Mamdani has also been a staunch opponent of hidden junk fees, advancing a ban after previously cracking down on similar hotel fees and scrutinizing hidden rent fees, as we’ve covered.
Federal Judge Approves Hewlett Packard’s Corrupt Justice Department Settlement
A U.S. District Court cleared the way Thursday for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) settlement in Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) acquisition of rival Juniper Networks — one of the most corrupt merger settlements we’ve seen. A quick rewind: last year, after the DOJ challenged the two tech infrastructure giants’ $14 billion merger, warning that the deal would increase “concentration in an already concentrated market,” Hewlett Packard hired MAGA-connected lobbyists Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz to push the deal through. When DOJ antitrust head Gail Slater refused to cooperate, they went over her head to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. A top Bondi lieutenant ordered an eleventh-hour settlement in the case, for which two close allies of Slater were fired for resisting. A few months later, Slater was pushed out, too.
This is all a major disappointment. The 1974 Tunney Act gives judges a pathway to accountability, granting them the power to demand hearings, call witnesses, and request documents to scrutinize DOJ behavior and assure that antitrust settlements served the public interest. It’s been dormant for a while, but Judge Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California, who was overseeing the case, seemed poised to breathe new life into it by granting a motion filed by twelve states and D.C. led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, to intervene in the oversight proceedings of the HPE-Juniper merger settlement.
While Judge Pitts thanked the states for the “invaluable public service” in revealing the corruption behind the case, he erroneously concluded that the toothless, crooked settlement had to go through or else the DOJ would let it proceed without conditions. This decision seems to confirm that, as Research Manager Laurel Kilgour noted, “the Tunney Act is apparently just a participation trophy, not a safeguard for the rule of law.”
The De Minimis Loophole to Import Inspection Stays Closed
The U.S. Court of International Trade just upheld a major 2025 policy change Rethink Trade has fought years for — ending the de minimis loophole that lets big e-commerce corporations evade U.S. Customs and safety inspections on millions of packages delivered to Americans every day.
The court rejected an importer’s claim that the administration had no authority to require normal Customs procedures be applied to packages valued at $800 or less, which since 2015 had entered uninspected via the de minimis exemption. The court is distinguishing the case from the Supreme Court’s recent decision that struck down Trump’s use of the same statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), to impose tariffs. It found that that suspending an existing tariff exemption is not the same as imposing new tariffs — it simply makes previously exempt goods subject to normal Customs procedures, including inspection and applicable duties. Congress has since amended the underlying 1930s de minimis law to permanently end the waiver effective July 2027.
Quick Hits
Banning prior authorization, as we proposed in a report last week, is getting a lot of attention, from its prominent feature in Democrat Peggy Flanagan’s successful Minnesota Senate primary race to its embrace by former White House economic policy advisor Neale Mahoney. Meanwhile, members of Congress are pushing to repeal Trump’s WISeR pilot program, which has introduced an AI-driven prior authorization model in Medicare, fueling delays and care denials for seniors. To help in the fight against prior authorization, share your claim denial stories with us here.
CEO of Paramount David Ellison is throwing a tantrum over states’ antitrust challenge against their acquisition of Warner Bros., threatening to withdraw from California and New York if the states don’t settle by October, likely bluffing given the hundreds of millions of dollars in assets tied up in the states. Following reports that Ellison is lobbying Democratic powerbrokers to pressure California Attorney General Rob Bonta to settle, big-name politicians and unions came out in favor of a settlement. Bonta — who has had success after success on this case— however stayed the course, as have others like Rep. Jamie Raskin who requested Ellison appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a transcribed interview. For more on this merger, catch Senior Fellow Alvaro Bedoya’s conversation with comedian-journalist Francesca Fiorentini.
Seattle’s City Council voted unanimously to pass an rule mandating transparency in rental listings and banning landlords from imposing junk fees.
Tyson Foods, America’s second-largest beef processor, plans to close or sell three beef facilities, with the company shrinking its beef-processing operations by roughly one-third this year.
It’s been a big week in airline news: House Democrats are probing eight major airlines over alleged use of surveillance pricing to personalize fares based on private, consumer data, while the TSA’s union is suing the federal government over alleged plans to privatize airport security. Meanwhile, a departing FAA official warned the agency is being “nudged” to accept more risk as it integrates drones, and private airlines continue to consolidate as Solairus Aviation plans to acquire Clay Lacy’s charter and aircraft-management businesses.
Louisiana regulators killed a ruling that would have forced Meta to disclose key information about its planned Hyperion hyperscale data center, which is involved in of one of the country’s most notorious secret data center deals.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen led a coalition of seven GOP state AGs urging the Surface Transportation Board to reject the Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger, warning it would reduce competition, raise costs for shippers and consumers, and create a behemoth controlling over half the U.S. rail market.
A WIRED investigative report found that the McDonald’s loyalty program compiles 500+ page dossiers on each customers’ purchases and uses predictive algorithms to forecast their future visits, spending, and likely orders.
Dream Finders Homes agreed to acquire Beazer Homes for $915 million, creating the nation’s sixth-largest homebuilder and further consolidating the market.
Catch Research Manager Laurel Kilgour’s Capitol Forum article on how a seemingly innocuous checkbox in a seed registry could potentially let Big Ag tighten its dominance on an already highly concentrated seed market.
Managing Editor Helaine Olen has been all over this week, from the pages of the American Prospect where she reviewed a memoir on Silicon Valley wealth, to MS NOW where she reflected on Trump’s stagflation problem. Tune in to Ian Master’s Background Briefing podcast to hear her dive deep into America’s affordability crisis.
ICYMI: How are grocery bills rising so fast while grocery workers getting paid so little? Communications Associate Zachary Hagen-Smith sits down with author Ann Larson to discuss her new book on the realities of grocery store work.