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.
There Is No AI Exemption from the Law
Last week, not long after the Hugging Face incident, in which autonomous AI agents hacked the servers of a prominent tech company, several Anthropic staffers made dire warnings about the catastrophic potential of AI superintelligence (AGI). In the wake of these menacing predictions and ensuing frenzy, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed exempting big AI firms from antitrust laws in the name of “AI safety.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed. Shortly thereafter, news broke that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google were talking about creating what sounds an awful lot like an AI cartel. This is all occurring weeks out from Anthropic’s IPO. While the alarm of individual employees may be genuine, even if overblown, the response from their CEOs deserves far more skepticism.
None of this means AI is harmless. It is a new technology that brings with it a new set of challenges. But AGI does not today exist and may never exist. Speculation about AGI shouldn’t distract from the real challenges AI is already unleashing on a range of fronts from cybersecurity to education to bioterrorism. But this new frontier is not a lawless one. As former FTC commissioner Lina Khan pointed out, these firms don’t exist in a “legal vacuum” there is “no AI exemption from laws already on the books.” Law enforcers already have the authority to charge these companies and their executives for releasing dangerous, unvetted products, anticompetitive partnerships, and cybersecurity failures. Many AI abuses, such as OpenAI’s newly revealed copyright violations, can also be reined in by existing laws; indeed, AI companies are already facing a litany of copyright lawsuits.
Additionally, AI companies do not need the antitrust exemption that the Open AI and Anthropic CEOs are calling for to develop safer products. In fact, antitrust law already allows AI companies to work together to prevent real harm, negating a meaningful purpose for exemptions beyond advantaging big AI firms.
Of course, there is room for new policy ideas to regulate this industry like a bipartisan proposal to mandate AI firms license rather than steal from copyright holders. This would be a good place to start. But the fundamental problem is not a lack of law but a lack of will to enforce it.
As states investigate these companies, Trump has shut down demands for regulatory oversight. Attorney General Todd Blanche has likewise called for less enforcement, with Trump’s FTC is embracing an AI Action Plan that advocates ignoring rules that “unduly burden AI innovation,” while also dropping penalties and investigations into AI giants. Though some Democrats have also bowed to Big Tech influence, others are calling for enforcement, holding hearings to develop thoughtful measures, and proposing what anti-corruption should look like in an AI age. The fight here is in many ways a similar story to what we’ve seen across the antimonopoly movement: the struggle to ensure that those with power are not above the rule of law.
Utility Mega-Merger Offers “Benefits Bribe” & Earns Big Tech Support
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy announced a new benefits package for their proposed $67 billion merger, telling Virginians the deal will now deliver lower bills, new jobs, and clean energy development. This is a move straight out of the monopoly playbook: a package of tacit bribes to smooth the path for an illegal merger. Indeed, all benefits are contingent on merger approval and disappear otherwise. Moreover, the pledge itself is outside of their control, as the Virginia State Corporation Commission sets base rates every two years. Nonetheless, the package swayed over Virginia’s GOP and even some Democrats.
Google and Amazon are also now lending their support. Why? As the utilities themselves admit, this merger is about data centers. NextEra and Dominion aim to capitalize off of Virginia’s global lead in the hyperscale data center buildout to deploy a tried-and-tested tactic of pursuing massive infrastructure investment to justify rate increases. That means Big Tech gets the electricity needed for its AI bubble, while customers bear the brunt of higher regional electricity bills, which are already climbing.
Luckily, not everyone is on board. Richmond, Charlottesville, Harrisburg, and Arlington County have all filed notices against the case, and so have a number of community groups. As the fight against this utility mega-merger plays out, we’ll continue to let you know what’s happening.
Unsafe Expensive Hamburger, Served with a Side of Corruption
Hamburger lovers, beware: the latest twist in the beef price crisis is deeply unappetizing.
On August 21, Trump announced a 90-day waiver of tariffs and quotas letting in up to 660 million additional pounds of imported beef duty-free. The White House is selling this move as a fix for surging prices. However, importing more beef likely won’t cut consumer prices, but it will drive down the price the ranchers who backed Trump receive, already generating ire from them and some congressional GOP. In a recent study by our Rethink Trade team, Hamburger Hell: Record High Consumer Beef Prices that Tariffs Haven’t Caused, Imports Haven’t Lowered, and the Cattle Cycle Can’t Explain but that Can Be Fixed, we showed that consumer prices kept rising after previous quota and tariff waivers. That is because four packers — Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef — control 85% of beef processing. Just 20 firms handle 98% of cattle slaughter. The new imports, which are scrap cuts that go into ground meat, are sent to the firms that make hamburger and have market power to simply pocket the added profit from using cheap imports while continuing to charge us a lot.
Moreover, it turns out that most of the new imports will come from Brazil – despite the fact the European Union recently suspended all Brazilian meat imports as unsafe because of antibiotic misuse. But American consumers probably can’t avoid it A 2014 WTO ruling killed the U.S. mandatory country-of-origin labeling law, so ground beef blends origins with zero disclosure., and Congress officially repealed the law the following year, under House Speaker John Boehner who joined JBS’s board the following year. And it turns out that Joesley Batista, who controls Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, landed a White House meeting in November 2025 through his friendship with Melania Trump. He then met Trump again in the Oval Office on August 20, 2026, a day before the waiver dropped. A JBS subsidiary gave $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, the largest single donor. This deal reeks worse than rotting meat.
Quick Hits
Mark your calendars! On Sept. 24th at 5PM, we are hosting a NYC press roundtable on Amazon delivery driver safety and working conditions, with a coalition of workers, leaders, and advocates. To RSVP, email agross@economicliberties.us.
The proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. deal’s near-half ownership by totalitarian Gulf countries was just approved by the Federal Communications Commission. This comes as, in a desperate attempt at blackmail, Paramount orchestrates a series of leaks suggesting it will leave California if its merger is blocked.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is now requiring proposed data centers secure local approval before state permitting with extra scrutiny on large projects, while Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo has ordered data centers seeking state tax breaks cover their own power costs and meet water-use and grid-reliability standards or else face clawbacks. Meanwhile, New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland has proposed a moratorium on new large-scale data centers.
Though Google was found guilty of monopolizing the ad tech market, newly unsealed remedies against it include only slap-on-the-wrist temporary data sharing and interoperability measures that keep its monopoly intact.
Bad news for student athletes: the Protect College Sports Act moved closer to a Senate vote after passing cloture by a 74-24 margin. The bill would give the NCAA an antitrust shield to restrict student athlete pay and team transfers.
A records request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed that WISeR, Medicare’s pilot prior authorization program, is fueling widespread delays and technical failures, with nearly 6,000 denials in its first three months.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Rick Scott are requesting the FTC look into how Amazon and Walmart chatbots discuss “Made in the USA” claims, citing an analysis from Columbia University’s Center for Law and the Economy.
In a party-line vote, Republicans advanced a bill that would steer MedPAC’s analysis of Medicare Advantage overpayments toward an approach more favorable to insurers.
DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb secured a $9.3 million from two corporate landlords over alleged RealPage rent-fixing, with the landlords agreeing to stop using competitors’ private data to set rents and change their rent-setting practices.
Twelve Arkansas pharmacies sued Express Scripts, alleging the PBM underpaid nearly 50,000 prescriptions below the legally required drug acquisition cost.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Jeff Merkley this week introduced the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act, which would close a key loophole to ensure medical practices are run by actual practitioners, not big corporations.
Check out Bloomberg’s profile on Sam Levine, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and his antimonopoly agenda.
ICYMI: How have decades of prioritizing corporations and profits over people and communities impacted Americans? Senator Chris Murphy offers an answer in his discussion with Managing Editor Helaine Olen.