FTCWatch

  • September 08, 2026

    Groups call for FTC investigation into AI companies buying, destroying books

    Sitting at his desk in his wood-paneled upstairs office in a Washington, DC-suburban warehouse, Allan Stypeck, a used-and-rare bookseller for 53 years, says he made his “first huge sale” to an artificial intelligence company in May.

  • September 08, 2026

    Nvidia’s Hugging Face openness pledge identifies US, EU antitrust fault line

    Nvidia’s promise to preserve Hugging Face as an open, hardware-neutral platform anticipates what is likely to become the central issue in the antitrust reviews of its $12.93 billion acquisition: whether the dominant supplier of artificial-intelligence chips could use control of a critical developer platform to reinforce its position across the AI ecosystem.

  • September 08, 2026

    Telemarketers hit with fee hike over Do Not Call Registry

    Telemarketers will pay higher fees to access phone numbers on the national Do Not Call Registry starting Oct. 1. 

  • September 08, 2026

    Calendar

    Sept. 14 — Federal Trade Commission member Mark Meador will speak at the Bill Kovacic Antitrust Salon. The event, sponsored by Concurrences, will begin at 12:30 p.m. and take place at George Washington University Law School’s Jacob Burns Moot Court Room in Washington, DC. For more details, go to: https://www.concurrences.com.

  • September 08, 2026

    Slaughter joins NYU as senior fellow

    Rebecca Kelly Slaughter is heading off to New York University School of Law. The school said the former Federal Trade Commission member will join its Center for Law and Public Trust.

  • September 08, 2026

    Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern deal raises service concerns

    Regulators reviewing Union Pacific Railroad’s proposed acquisition of Norfolk Southern may not be paying enough attention to the potential harms it will have on service.

  • September 08, 2026

    Neil Averitt commentary: The curious case of Hims & Hers

    The Federal Trade Commission has sued lifestyle pharmaceutical marketer Hims & Hers on multiple charges, most involving its negative-option subscriptions. These charges seem valid, but the consumer harm is limited, raising the question of why this marginal case is being so tenaciously litigated by both sides.

  • September 08, 2026

    Personalized pricing draws renewed FTC interest

    The Federal Trade Commission is weighing a new enforcement policy for “personalized pricing,” a practice that uses consumer data to tailor prices to individual shoppers. 

  • September 08, 2026

    Amazon faces suit from FTC, states over ad surcharge scheme

    Amazon has been accused of secretly inflating prices in its search advertising auctions in a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and 22 states.

  • September 08, 2026

    FTC abandons disparate-impact cases in policy shift

    The Federal Trade Commission will no longer pursue claims based on disparate impact or a theory of “unfair discrimination.”

  • September 08, 2026

    Congress moves to tighten regulatory grip on college sports

    As Congress seeks to expand federal oversight of college sports, including through new antitrust exemptions, lawmakers are tackling a problem that has persisted for years.

  • September 08, 2026

    KKR to pay record fine for serial HSR violations

    Buyout firm KKR has agreed to pay a record $250 million penalty to settle government claims of violating merger filing rules.

  • September 08, 2026

    People — Former enforcer Aitken settles into ABA role

    Melanie Aitken, the new chair of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section, brings two unique characteristics to the job.

  • August 18, 2026

    DOJ’s HPE-Juniper settlement greenlit by federal judge

    The Department of Justice’s eve-of-trial settlement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise over its acquisition of rival Juniper Networks — which led to two Antitrust Division leaders being fired after they opposed the compromise — was ratified by a federal judge. He determined that DOJ turmoil before and after the settlement was reached didn’t nullify its legitimacy. 

  • August 18, 2026

    Privacy Corner: Inside Eastin’s risky mission against Meta

    Tony Eastin is a former global operations investigator for Meta. That didn’t deter him from targeting how child abuse happens on the tech giant’s platforms after his 2023 layoff. 

  • August 18, 2026

    People — Ex-FTC lawyer Antonini leads case against Nexstar from California DOJ

    For one recent addition to the antitrust section of the California Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission’s 2024 Tapestry-Capri case was about much more than handbags.

  • August 18, 2026

    Walmart, Amazon using AI tools said to deceive consumers on ‘Made in USA’ goods

    Walmart and Amazon, using artificial intelligence tools, “deceived” consumers over so-called “Made in America” products, a Columbia University Law School study found.

  • August 18, 2026

    Ferguson, Meador split on merger vote over IonQ, SkyWater

    Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador voted differently on the conditions for quantum computing firm IonQ to buy chipmaker SkyWater. It was a rare instance of a split among members of the same political party.

  • August 18, 2026

    Calendar

    Sept. 14 — Federal Trade Commission member Mark Meador will speak at the Bill Kovacic Antitrust Salon. The event, sponsored by Concurrences, will begin at 12:30 p.m. and take place at George Washington University Law School’s Jacob Burns Moot Court Room in Washington, DC. For more details, go to: https://www.concurrences.com.

  • August 18, 2026

    Court shuts down massive credit repair operation

    A federal court has temporarily shut down an alleged credit repair ring after a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission.

  • August 18, 2026

    At Senate hearing, Trump’s DOJ antitrust pick gets mixed reactions

    Adam Candeub, the Trump administration’s nominee for the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, got a party-line reception from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

  • August 18, 2026

    RentGrow to pay $2.25 million over tenant-screening violations

    RentGrow has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle claims over violations concerning tenant background reports.

  • August 18, 2026

    Neil Averitt commentary: Strategic implications of the Slaughter ruling

    Longtime friends of the Federal Trade Commission have been discussing how to respond to the Trump v. Slaughter decision. Unfortunately, they have been whistling past the graveyard and missing the bigger question, which is how an independent agency can go about justifying its existence in a newly skeptical world.

  • August 18, 2026

    GOP senator moves to alter two-member FTC with quorum bill

    A Republican member of the Senate panel that oversees the Federal Trade Commission has proposed legislation to amend the agency’s decision-making structure on the heels of a recent Supreme Court ruling.

  • August 18, 2026

    On the Shelf: A Google executive’s rocky tenure

    Memoirs by former technology executives are usually whine festivals and contain phrases like “if they had only listened to me, things would have been better.”