If you’re tired of Techdirt posts about RFK Jr.’s inability to competently lead HHS, I’m tired of him leading that organization, so too bad. The problem is that RFK Jr. represents something of a national health emergency, one that is multi-faceted. The most obvious bucket of fuckery in which he is operating is, of course, when it comes to vaccines, as Kennedy has been a anti-vaxxer for decades now. You should recall that Kennedy fired every member of ACIP, the immunization advisory panel at the CDC, only to appoint a cadre of anti-vaxxers and those otherwise aligned with his views on healthcare. This new version of ACIP predictably changed stances on all kinds of vaccines, especially mRNA vaccines for COVID. Not long after, Kennedy personally pulled federal funding for mRNA vaccines over the objections of all kinds of doctors and scientists.
As all of this was going on, at least one state began crafting legislation to bypass the CDC’s recommendations on vaccines and look instead for guidance from NGOs, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP had itself begun boycotting ACIP working sessions and vocally disagreeing with Kennedy on several healthcare issues, including vaccines. The problem, of course, is that the health insurance industry has largely looked to ACIP recommendations to determine what insurance will cover and what it won’t.
Well, AAP has just come out with its own vaccine schedule recommendations, differing greatly from the CDC’s, and has reportedly been working directly with insurance providers to push them to provide coverage.
The AAP’s vaccine schedule diverges from the CDC schedule under Kennedy on the recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines. After Kennedy’s unilateral change, the CDC no longer recommends routine COVID-19 vaccination for healthy children, but allows for the shots after a conversation with a child’s doctor. In contrast, the AAP—the largest pediatrics association in the country—recommends the shots for all children ages 6 months to 23 months, as well as high-risk children ages 2 to 18. Children not in these age or risk groups should also have access to the shots if desired, the AAP guidance says.
As the Ars post notes, school is starting and COVID infections are on the rise. Winter is coming, to borrow a phrase, and with it, other respiratory viruses. While insurance companies must cover vaccination schedules approved by the CDC, they are under no such obligation when it comes to AAP recommendations. Sean O’Leary of the AAP, however, has indicated that the insurance companies seem to be leaning toward accepting AAP’s recommendations and will provide coverage.
O’Leary told The Washington Post that insurers are “signaling that they are committed to covering our recommendations.” The Post also noted that AHIP, the major insurance lobby, released a statement in June saying its members are committed to “ongoing coverage of vaccines to ensure access and affordability for this respiratory virus season.”
Now, whether this is the insurance industry deciding to do the right thing on a rare occasion, or the companies have simply done the math that the vaccinations will cost less than covering the hospital visits for a truckload of unvaccinated children, is a matter ripe for debate. But it’s a good thing, nonetheless.
Kennedy responded in a post on social platform X, calling the group’s recommendations “corporate friendly” because the AAP receives donations to its Friends of Children Fund from vaccine companies like Pfizer and Moderna, among others.
The philanthropic fund backs projects supporting child health and equity.
The HHS secretary said the organization should disclose “its corporate entanglements … so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”
AAP is very transparent about its funding, including its corporate partnerships. They have a whole page for it on their website. And, yes, of course there are pharma companies that sponsor via their philanthropic funds. But unless Kennedy wants to allege any specific tie between that funding and AAP recommendations, this is all just conspiracy-mongering in response to a differing view.
And it’s pretty damned rich for Kennedy to prattle on about corporate entanglements when his drafted MAHA report for childhood healthcare managed to dodge all of Kennedy’s hobbyhorses if they would in any way effect industry.
Kennedy claimed long ago that he had no intention of taking vaccines away from anyone. It’s so strange to see him so angry that he isn’t able to take vaccines away from children.
During the last year of the Trump administration, there was this weird period where the Bill Barr DOJ decided that it could destroy the internet. It came out of Donald Trump declaring that Section 230 was bad for whatever reason Donald Trump thinks anything is bad, and telling his Attorney General to do something about it. This kicked off a weird time where Bill Barr was suddenly criticizing 230 (even though 230 has nothing to do with the DOJ) and ran a silly process to come up with “ideas” for how to change 230 (again, totally outside of the DOJ’s authority).
In 2020 (before COVID took over everything), the DOJ held a very odd “workshop” in which it brought in every crazy MAGA kook with a conspiracy theory about the internet to tell them how to rewrite 230. It then proposed some very bad ideas for how to “reform” 230, before effectively the clock ran out on Trump’s first term.
The good folks at EFF filed multiple lawsuits over all this, and earlier this year discovered that one reason why the clock ran out on the DOJ was that the team working on these issues was blindsided when, in the middle of it all, Trump issued an executive order that attacked the internet companies he was mad at… which the DOJ was already trying to figure out a way to regulate via 230 reform.
EFF has now received some more FOIA files from the government, and found that the Bill Barr DOJ was actually working closely with Congress to try to get a 230 rewrite through.
The newdocuments, disclosed in an EFF Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, show officials weretalkingwith Senate staffersworking to passspeech- and privacy-chilling bills like theEARN IT ActandPACT Act(neither became law). DOJ officials alsocommunicatedwith an organization that sought to condition Section 230’s legal protections on websites using age-verification systems if they hosted sexual content.
It’s certainly not unheard of that the DOJ would communicate with Congress over changes to laws it would like to see, but this still remained pretty weird in that usually it’s over laws that impact the DOJ itself (i.e., federal criminal laws). Remember: Section 230 has always had a carve out for all federal criminal laws, so does absolutely nothing to hinder any DOJ case whatsoever.
Many of the emails involve Lauren Willard, who worked directly for Bill Barr at the DOJ, in charge of competition and tech issues, and was part of the team that brought the DOJ’s first antitrust lawsuit against Google. In this packet is the email she sent to a bunch of Senate staffers who were apparently a part of the wider team between DOJ and certain Senate offices to gut 230:
Hi everyone,
After many, many months of hard work and collaboration by this group, we finally received the green light to send our draft legislative packet to OMB to start the interagency process. (Yay!) Attached is the draft redline, cover letter, and section by section. There were a few minor edits as this was officially cleared by DOJ Leadership, but is extremely closeto what everyone has seen numerous times already.
I really appreciate this team’s intellect, patience, and creative thinking. I know the draft isn’t exactly what everyone wanted, but I think it is a credible and thoughtful contribution to the Section 230 debate and represents well our DOJ equities.
Also, the fact that the DOJ was coordinating with people like Jon Schweppe (the last link in that EFF summary) is doubly interesting given that he’s now at the FTC and one of his tweets about punishing Media Matters helped get the FTC’s bogus investigation of that org blocked by the court. His contribution was to try to get Section 230 contingent on age gating the internet:
APP’s primary policy goal with regard to pornography is to get sites that host pornography to implement an age screening system. We think the best way to do this (while adhering to SCOTUS precedent) is to get the sites to do it voluntarily by having Congress amend Sec. 230 and make their immunity from civil liability conditional. There are a couple ways we can do that, but it sounds like DOJ’s proposal might effectively do the same thing?
Also of interest: in the latest packet… the DOJ was apparently reading Techdirt! On page 431 there’s a document (it’s unclear what it was for or how it was used) apparently looking at the reaction to FOSTA (the one time that Section 230 has been amended). The document includes the Sheryl Sandberg blog post where she flips Facebook from working to stop FOSTA to coming out in full-throated support. It then quotes the NY Times, but then quotes “From a leading 230 advocate and tech blogger post-SESTA,” and includes quotes from two different Techdirt articles. First, an article Cathy Gellis wrote blaming Facebook’s change of heart for ruining the internet for everyone. And then my postmortem on how the Internet Association was pressured by Facebook to support FOSTA, and how many of its other members were pissed off about this (leading to the eventual dissolution of the entire organization).
The DOJ files quote both of those articles without saying who wrote them or the URL (though it implies both were written by the same person, despite Cathy and I being very different people—does no one read bylines any more?). At least they consider us a “leading” 230 advocate…
Anyway, a good bit of FOIA sleuthing by EFF, showing that a non-independent DOJ carrying out orders from Donald Trump to punish his perceived enemies, even outside the DOJ’s purview, was also a thing back during his first term.
A New York business frozen out of its checking account. A Georgia chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund after a product dispute. A New Jersey service member defrauded out of their savings.
These consumers — along with hundreds of others — reached out to their congressional representatives for help in the past 12 months.
“I have been unable to pay my rent, utilities, personal bills, student loans, or my credit card. I have been unable to buy groceries or put gas in my car,” wrote the New Yorker, who contacted Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ office.
Records show their representatives — all Republicans — referred them to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency formed in the wake of the Great Recession to shield Americans from unfair or abusive business practices. All three consumers got relief, according to agency data.
Then the lawmakers — along with nearly every other Republican in Congress — voted to slash the agency’s funding by nearly half as part of President Donald Trump’s signature legislative package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a step toward the administration’s goal of gutting the agency.
Republicans have long been critical of the CFPB, accusing it of imposing unreasonable burdens on businesses. Already, the CFPB under Trump has dropped a number of cases and frozen investigations into dozens of companies.
Yet the agency has historically benefited consumers across the political spectrum, securing around $20 billion in relief through its enforcement actions.
Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, for example, voted to reduce the CFPB’s budget. Yet each of their offices has referred more than 100 constituents to the CFPB for help, among the most of any House members. The office of Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who also voted for the CFPB cuts, has routed more than 800 constituent complaints to the agency, the most of any current lawmaker from either party, ProPublica found.
A spokesperson for Issa said in an email that most of his office’s referrals to the agency “occurred several years ago” and reflected “a conventional way” to handle constituents’ consumer issues.
Wittman and Cornyn didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the disconnect between their offices’ use of the CFPB’s services and their votes to cut it. Neither did New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, whose office fielded the defrauded service member’s complaint, or Malliotakis, who was approached by the New York business owner, or Rep. Rick Allen, whose office directed the Georgia chemotherapy patient to the agency.
Overall, members of Congress have steered nearly 24,000 complaints to the CFPB since it opened its doors in 2011. Roughly 10,000 of those were referred by the offices of current and former Republican lawmakers, ProPublica found.
“This is how members of Congress from both parties get help for the people who live in their districts,” said Erie Meyer, the CFPB’s former chief technologist, who left the agency in February. The agency has a particular mandate to help service members and seniors, she noted. “This is how, if a service member is getting screwed on an auto loan, this is the only place they can go.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has referred more than 200 constituents to CFPB since its creation. In a statement to ProPublica, he accused Republicans in Congress of “pursuing senseless cuts that will undermine their own ability to protect their constituents, who will be left in the lurch when they fall victim to scams or deceptive and unfair business practices.”
“Republicans have made clear that they stand on the side of big businesses — not consumers,” he added. “Their irresponsible pursuit of dismantling the CFPB will have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.”
An Irreplaceable System
In recent years, the CFPB’s public database shows the number of complaints has exploded, from around 280,000 in 2019 to more than 2.7 million last year.
Complaints have grown across many categories, including credit cards and debt collection. Last year, most of the complaints filed, over 2.3 million, were about mistakes or other problems involving credit reporting agencies, and more than half of them resulted in relief, CFPB data shows.
“These credit score formulas govern so many factors of your life. It’s not just your ability to get a loan, it’s your ability to secure housing or qualify for a job,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important that you can resolve something, but it’s difficult to do it on your own.”
Once a complaint is submitted, it is routed to the company, which has 15 days to respond. Companies can request an additional 45 days to reach a final resolution.
Many consumers end up getting nonmonetary relief, such as fixes to erroneous credit reports or an end to harassment by debt collectors, but some get financial help as well. More than $300 million has been returned to Americans through the complaint system, including $90 million just last year.
Normally, staff at the CFPB monitor the complaints to identify systemic issues and escalate complaints involving consumers who are at immediate risk of foreclosure, although that didn’t happen for a few weeks this year when the agency’s acting director halted its work.
The CFPB also shares complaint information with other federal agencies, states and localities to help them protect consumers. No other government or private entity has the capacity to effectively handle the volume of complaints that the CFPB does, experts and current and former employees say.
In legal filings opposing the Trump administration’s steps to effectively shut down the CFPB, 23 Democratic attorneys general noted that their states collectively have referred thousands of complaints to the agency and that its services can’t be replaced by state-level operations.
“In the CFPB’s absence, consumers will be left without critical resources,” they wrote.
The complaint system has also lessened the burden on congressional offices, which can route constituent problems to an agency dedicated to, and expert in, addressing consumer issues. Yet that hasn’t stopped Republicans from pursuing dramatic cuts to the agency.
The CFPB receives its funding from the Federal Reserve instead of annual appropriations bills. The structure is meant to safeguard the agency’s independence, though critics say this makes the agency less accountable, giving elected officials less power over its operations.
Initially, Republicans pressed for extreme cuts to the CFPB as part of Trump’s legislative package. House members approved a 70% cut. The Senate Banking Committee attempted to go even further, zeroing out the agency’s funding entirely.
Ultimately, the final version of the bill signed into law by Trump on July 4 cut the CFPB’s budget by around 46%, reducing the agency’s funding cap — the maximum amount it can request from the Federal Reserve — from $823 million to $446 million for this fiscal year. The agency requested $729 million last fiscal year.
The offices of lawmakers who voted for the bill have referred about 3,400 complaints to the agency, running the gamut of consumer problems — from crushing debt to mortgage issues to financial scams, ProPublica’s data analysis shows. (In some of these cases, consumers also took complaints to the CFPB themselves in addition to reaching out to their representatives. Consumers’ names aren’t disclosed in the data.)
Their constituents are sometimes desperate: “I’m about to be homeless because of this,” wrote a Florida resident whose bank account was frozen.
Others have expressed frustration at getting the runaround from a company. “I’ve spent countless hours on hold trying to speak with a representative, only to be met with silence or outdated instructions to send letters,” wrote one Virginian in a complaint about their bank.
In a statement after the CFPB funding cut passed, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Scott, R-S.C., applauded the measure for saving taxpayer money but insisted it would not affect the agency’s mandatory functions, which include handling complaints.
Consumer experts as well as current and former CFPB employees, however, said the cuts will likely hinder the agency’s effectiveness.
“I think the whole process is at risk,” said Ruth Susswein, director of consumer protection at the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Action. “If you starve the system, it cannot provide the benefits that it now offers.”
Signs of Strain
The Trump administration’s initial efforts to unilaterally hobble the CFPB give a hint of what may lie ahead for the complaint system.
In February, acting Director Russell Vought issued a stop-work order to all CFPB employees and canceled a slew of contracts, including for antivirus software that scanned files attached to consumer complaints.
The actions largely froze the complaint system for about a week. More than 70,000 complaints were submitted, but most were not sent to companies for their response during that period, data shows.
Although some issues were later fixed, the work stoppage spawned a backlog of more than 16,000 complaints that required manual review, according to court records from a lawsuit filed by the union that represents CFPB employees. About 75 complaints from consumers at risk of imminent foreclosure, which would normally be escalated to CFPB staff, weren’t acted upon.
In late March, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the CFPB to end the work stoppage, reverse contract terminations and reinstate probationary employees who were fired. However, an appeals court allowed layoffs to proceed, triggering a frenzied effort by the administration to cut about 90% of the CFPB’s staff.
The layoffs included the vast majority of the roughly 130-member team that manages the complaint system as well as nearly every staffer in legally mandated offices focused on service members and seniors.
The CFPB has fielded over 440,000 complaints from current and former service members and their families since 2011, according to CFPB data, more than 100,000 of which have resulted in relief.
The CFPB did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a court declaration, Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s chief legal officer, said that the agency’s leadership had “been assessing how the agency can fulfill its statutory duties as a smaller, more efficient operation. In making this assessment, leadership discovered vast waste in the agency’s size.”
Paoletta also said the agency would have a “much more limited vision for enforcement and supervision activities, focused on protecting service members and veterans, and addressing actual tangible consumer harm and intentional discrimination.”
In April, Jackson issued an order blocking the firings made at the CFPB after the appeals court decision. The administration has appealed Jackson’s ruling.
Lawsuits won’t protect the CFPB or its complaint apparatus from the cuts included in the recently passed spending bill, current and former agency employees pointed out.
These changes are likely to hit home with consumers no matter which party they favor, said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, which is a plaintiff in the union’s lawsuit.
“Republicans don’t want to be abused by big corporations that ignore them any more than Democrats do,” she said.
Idiots are running the agencies and assholes are staffing the administration’s official social media accounts. These days ICE and the DHS are spending most of their time online calling factual reports “fake news,” blowing as many racist dog whistles as they can find, and otherwise deliberately misunderstanding the Constitutional rights they swore to protect and uphold.
Back in the old days (as recently as last year!), an official government social media account wouldn’t be caught dead reposting stuff dumped onto the web by bigoted trolls and novelty accounts. Now, it’s just everyday business at the Government, where insanely biased accounts like “Libs of TikTok” are being given a larger bullhorn by government agency reposts. That’s not a smart move. It suggests the government endorses the sentiments it’s rebroadcasting.
But more than that, it suggests the people running government social media accounts are no more judicious or capable of sound judgment than the absolute dreck they choose to amplify. In this case, highlighted by Sarah McLaughlin on Bluesky, it’s more than just stupid. It’s ICE tagging another federal agency presumably in hopes of instigating legal action against someone engaging in protected speech.
Here’s the post by McLaughlin:
A CT state rep posted a story about reports of ICE activity in his district and asked neighbors to "look out for another" and contact advocacy groups.Libs of TikTok posted it, calling for him to be charged and tagging ICE & DHS.ICE shared it, tagging the Justice Dept.This is protected speech.
In case you can’t see/read the embed, McLaughlin has posted a screenshot of an X post by ICE’s official account, which retweets a Libs of TikTok post calling for the “charging” of Connecticut state representative Corey Paris for “doxxing ICE’s live location and warning illegals to stay ‘vigilant.'”
To which McLaughlin has added:
A CT state rep posted a story about reports of ICE activity in his district and asked neighbors to “look out for another” and contact advocacy groups.
Libs of TikTok posted it, calling for him to be charged and tagging ICE & DHS.
ICE shared it, tagging the Justice Dept.
This is protected speech.
McLaughlin is right. Libs of TikTok, as it almost always is, is wrong.
First off, you cannot “dox” the live location of public officials carrying out their duties in public. It’s impossible. While it may be inconvenient to be live-streamed or snitched out to social media, every part of what’s being reported is the very definition of “public” and is definitely of public interest. A location cannot be doxed. If it can be seen by anyone on the street, it’s in public view. Just ask any cop who’s ever taken advantage of an automatic license plate reader or utility pole-mounted surveillance camera.
Second, Libs of TikTok deliberately misrepresents what was said by Rep. Corey Paris. Here’s what he actually said, according to the screenshot of his Instagram account that Libs of TikTok posted itself.
I’ll go ahead and transcribe it, since it’s all a bit much to be expected to read in the format it’s been presented in.
This morning, I was made aware of multiple reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity within our district. While we are working to verify the full scope of these reports, I urge all residents to remain vigilant, stay aware of your surroundings, and, above all, prioritize your safety.
Please look out for one another, check in with neighbors who may be concerned, and seek out trusted legal and community resources if needed. If you have information about ICE activity, share it with local advocacy organizations who can respond quickly and appropriately.
Our community is strongest when we remain informed, united, and committed to protecting the dignity and safety of all who call it home.
You can read this statement through as many times as you want and you won’t find anything that even remotely resembles “doxxing ICE locations” or otherwise strays anywhere near the outer boundaries of the First Amendment. Nothing unlawful is suggested or encouraged. All the state rep does is tell people ICE may be operating in the area and urges people to contact legal aid and advocacy groups if they need assistance. Otherwise, it just tells people to look out for themselves and their neighbors and, above all, prioritize their safety.
I assume the person running ICE’s official X account didn’t bother to read anything but the Libs of TikTok misrepresentation of what was said by Rep. Paris. I guess I would hope that was the case, because if the staffer did read this and still decided to tag in the DOJ’s official X account, that would be even more disturbing than simply playing to bigots by pretending the assertions made by Libs of TikTok had merit and that Paris should be investigated, if not actually arrested, for alleged “doxxing” that’s impossible to accomplish and isn’t actually happening in the first place.
Our nation is in the hands of the dumbest of dumb fucks. With any luck (and plenty of useful nudges) they’ll wear themselves out before they destroy this nation completely. And while I’d like to believe there will still be a nation worth saving once this regime is ousted, it’s gonna be hell patching up all the holes these dipshits have punched into the drywall of the Republic.
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When I was in DC last week, everyone seemed to be talking about the brewing drama at the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. The HPE/Juniper merger settlement had raised eyebrows, two senior officials had been fired, and rumors were swirling about political interference playing a role in ending what had appeared to be a decently strong antitrust case.
But I don’t think anyone expected one of those fired officials to go full scorched earth quite this quickly—or this thoroughly.
Roger Alford, who served as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s antitrust division before being fired, has now delivered a blistering public account of what he witnessed inside the Trump administration’s Justice Department. Speaking at the TPI Aspen Forum and writing in UnHerd, Alford has essentially confirmed a pay-to-play system that many people expected to arise under Trump, while also destroying any pretense of principled antitrust enforcement (which people like Matt Stoller naively insisted would continue under Trump).
For the few hipster antitrust folks among you, who still harbored credulous hopes that the Trump administration’s “populist” approach to antitrust would continue the more aggressive merger enforcement we saw under Lina Khan, Alford’s account should put that fantasy to rest permanently. What emerges instead is a picture of an administration where hiring the right Trump-connected lobbyists can get you out of even the most solid antitrust case.
The story centers on what should have been a straightforward antitrust case. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) wanted to acquire Juniper Networks for $14 billion, combining the second and third largest companies in the enterprise networking market. The DOJ filed a lawsuit in January to block the merger, alleging it would harm competition and consumers—exactly the kind of horizontal merger challenge that antitrust enforcers have been bringing for decades.
By all accounts, the government had a strong case and was prepared to go to trial. Then, just days before the trial was set to begin, the DOJ abruptly settled on terms that many experts called out as surprisingly weak. Instead of blocking the merger, the settlement required only that HPE divest a small business unit serving certain customers and license some AI technology.
What happened in between? According to reports (and now confirmed by Alford), HPE hired some of Trump’s friends, and suddenly the case got resolved through backroom dealing rather than legal merit.
Alford frames his account as a battle within the Republican party between what he calls “genuine MAGA reformers” (lol) and “MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists.” But come on. There are no “genuine MAGA reformers” anymore. There are just different types of grifters eyeing which angle works best for themselves. Alford’s description makes clear this is really about whether the wealthy and well-connected can simply purchase their way out of antitrust enforcement.
In his UnHerd piece, Alford doesn’t mince words about what he witnessed and makes sure to name names:
The core problem is simple: Attorney General Pam Bondi has delegated authority to figures — such as her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, and Associate Attorney General-Designee Stanley Woodward — who don’t share her commitment to a single tier of justice for all.
That assumes, of course, that Bondi isn’t also playing politics and loyalty over policy, which she absolutely is.
In his Aspen speech, Alford goes even further, directly accusing senior DOJ officials of corruption:
Although I am limited in what I can say, it is my opinion that in the HPE/Juniper merger scandalChad Mizelle and Stanley Woodward perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law.I am not given to hyperbole, and I do not say that lightly. As part of the forthcoming Tunney Act proceedings, it would be helpful for the court to clarify the substance and the process by which the settlement was reached. Although the Tunney Act has rarely served its intended purpose, this time the court may demand extensive discovery and examine the surprising truth of what happened. I hope the court blocks the HPE/Juniper merger. If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too. Someday I may have the opportunity to say more.
In case you’re wondering, the Tunney Act (the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act) makes judges evaluate whether a DOJ antitrust consent decree is “in the public interest.” Courts usually rubber-stamp, but they can demand explanations, take public comments, and—rarely—order discovery or reject a decree. If Alford’s right, this is one of those rare cases where the court should actually dig.
These are remarkable accusations from a recently fired government official. “Perverted justice” is not the kind of language former DOJ officials typically use when describing their former colleagues, even when they disagree with policy decisions.
Alford’s account describes in detail how the influence-peddling operation works in practice. Companies facing antitrust scrutiny can now hire politically connected lobbyists to circumvent the normal legal process entirely:
Is this the new normal, with every law firm hiring an influence peddler to dual track and sidestep the litigation and merger review process? That’s what law firms are now considering. The Department of Justice is now overwhelmed with lobbyists with little antitrust expertise going above the Antitrust Division leadership seeking special favors with warm hugs. On numerous occasions in a variety of matters we implored our superiors and the lawyers on the other side to call off the jackals. But to no avail. Today cases are being resolved based on political connections, not the legal merits
He specifically names the fairly well-known “lobbyists” involved in the HPE case:
Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz have made a Faustian bargain of trading on relationships with powerful people to reportedly earn million-dollar success fees by helping corporations undermine Trump’s antitrust agenda, hurt working class Americans, break the rules, and then try to cover it up.
Alford suggests that this move will hurt the reputations of both Davis and Schwartz, but that’s a bit rich, as both have reputations that are well known throughout the political world, and this seems more par for the course than anything else. The only reason to hire either of them is not for their knowledge of antitrust law or how to manage the fallout from an antitrust trial.
The only reason to hire them is for their political connections and shamelessness in conducting dirty tricks.
Davis spent years pushing ridiculous anti-internet/anti-tech policies, and four years ago it was revealed that he had actually sought to get hired by Google, and only became anti-internet when they rejected him. He’s made it quite clear that his views are entirely transactional. He has also talked about how excited he was to put kids in cages (he said it will “be glorious”) and to indict everyone named Biden.
As for Arthur Schwartz, he’s been a “political advisor” to Donald Trump Jr. for years and is close with the Trump family. A recent profile of MAGA lobbyists had retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis refer to Schwartz as “a political hack” and a “shitty political consultant.”
If anything, their reputations were burnished by this, not harmed. They’re political sleazeballs hired to engage in a corrupt plan, and they did exactly that.
Not surprisingly, this creates a system of “for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law” kind of Justice Department:
Others at the DOJ and elsewhere in government consider some parties, counsel, and lobbyists to be on the “same MAGA team” and worthy of special solicitude. They consider others to be “enemies of MAGA” that merit particular disfavor. In my opinion based on regular meetings with him, Chad Mizelle accepts party meetings and makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend. Aware of this injustice, companies are hiring lawyers and influence peddlers to bolster their MAGA credentials and pervert traditional law enforcement.
Alford’s revelations should put the final nail in the coffin to those poor deluded people who bought into the narrative that Trump’s approach to antitrust would somehow be more populist or more aggressive toward corporate power than traditional Republican policies. Instead, what emerges is a system that’s significantly more blatantly corrupt than the usual corporate-friendly approach (which was already somewhat corrupt):
The cost to the country of this new pay-to-play approach to antitrust enforcement is enormous. For thirty pieces of silver, MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists are influencing their allies within the DOJ and risking President Trump’s populist conservative agenda. This goes far beyond traditional lobbying functions. Their goal is to line their own pockets by working for any corporation that will pay top dollar to settle antitrust cases on the cheap. Doing so undermines the rule of law and desperately harms the average American. At risk are President Trump’s antitrust goals of reforming health care, addressing monopoly abuses, promoting deregulation, and helping renters, farmers and blue-collar workers.
And, yes, it’s easy to laugh at Alford for being so naive as to believe that a Trump DOJ would actually do anything along those lines, or actually believing that Trump had “antitrust goals” like those he described. You truly had to not be paying attention to think that’s where things were headed.
But at least it’s nice of him to come out and confirm exactly what plenty of us predicted would happen.
What makes Alford’s account particularly striking is how quickly and completely he’s burned his bridges. Getting fired from a senior government position is one thing—going public immediately afterward with detailed allegations of corruption is quite another. This suggests just how angry Alford is about what he witnessed.
His personal reflection drives home the bitterness:
My position while I served in government was simple: lobbyists and lawyers are subordinate to the law. Yet by stating this truth, I was dismissed for insubordination. My termination letter is now framed and hangs on the wall in my office at Notre Dame. I joke with friends that I’ve never been fired before, and I’ve been working since my first job as a young teenager at the Dairy Queen in Sherman, Texas. All it took to be fired were lobbyists exerting influence on my superiors to retaliate against me for protecting the rule of law against the rule of lobbyists.
This is certainly not the first time that a Trump regime official told all upon being stabbed in the back, but Alford coming out so clearly and directly calling out this blatant corruption is still notable.
Alford’s revelations should end any remaining speculation about whether this administration would continue Lina Khan-style antitrust enforcement. The HPE/Juniper case establishes a clear precedent: hire the right Trump-connected lobbyists, and you can get your merger approved regardless of its competitive impact.
Put money in the pockets of the king’s friends, and the king will make your troubles disappear.
Alford warns that other major cases may face similar interference:
Which case is the next casualty? Will the same senior DOJ officials ignore the President’s Executive Order just because Live Nation and Ticketmaster have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the Fifth Floor in defense of their monopoly abuses? I wonder what the national security arguments will be in that case.
And, um, yes. The answer is yes. Any major company is going to hire one of these guys, and they’ll laugh all the way to the bank.
There are no principles here. Only transactions.
What Alford describes isn’t just a failure of antitrust policy—it’s the fundamental corruption of the entire justice system that many of us warned we’d see in a second Trump Presidency. Alford’s account portrays justice as for sale to the highest bidder with the right MAGA connections.
Of course, the real irony here is that this is exactly the kind of behavior that Trump and his supporters keep claiming he was elected to get rid of. “Drain the swamp.” Instead, he’s loaded the swamp up with more alligators than ever, and they’re all his friends. The MAGA world isn’t just proving the “every accusation is a confession” line true over and over again, they seem to be proudly using it as a slogan.
This level of corruption is no surprise. The willingness of Alford to be so direct in telling the world about it so quickly after leaving the Justice Department, though, is certainly significant.
The rewrites delayed the underlying grant program, forcing many states to revamp their plans for the already earmarked funds. That includes states like Virginia, which recently tried to finalize their plans to spend $1.48 billion on faster, better broadband across the state. But they immediately ran into complaints by Elon Musk’s Starlink for not giving Elon Musk enough subsidies:
“The Virginia plan “represents a massive waste of federal taxpayer money, reverting to the Biden Administration’s failed approach to BEAD and completely disregarding the Trump Administration’s effort to restructure the program to accelerate broadband deployment and reduce spending,” SpaceX alleged. “Simply put, Virginia has put its heavy thumb on the scale in favor of expensive, slow-to-build fiber bias over speedy, low-cost, and technology neutral competition.”
Ideally, you want to spend most of taxpayer-funded broadband grant money on high capacity, future-proof, fiber optic broadband. From there, you want to fill in many of the remaining gaps with 5G cellular and fixed wireless. After that, you can fill in any remaining gaps with Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband services, which generally lack the capacity to be anything more than a niche player.
Musk and Republicans are demanding that states reverse that order, prioritizing Starlink service. The argument is that Starlink is cheaper to deploy than fiber.
And while technically true, Starlink has a long list of caveats. It’s often too expensive for users most in need of affordable broadband. The network is congested and can’t really handle a massive influx of users. It also harms the ozone layer and astronomy research. It’s not entirely guaranteed the service will even exist in ten years, making Starlink only “cheaper” if you ignore objective reality.
This is all before you get to the fact that the company is run by an overt white supremacist asshole.
Because they want more taxpayer subsidies, Starlink and SpaceX are urging the NTIA to reject Virginia’s latest plan. States now have to risk potentially losing out on billions in historic broadband grants if they fail to pander to Elon Musk, or dare to include provisions that actually try to ensure the resulting broadband access is affordable and evenly deployed to marginalized communities.
That means not only more expensive and less reliable broadband, but it means redirecting a lot of taxpayer money away from things like open access community-owned broadband and cooperatives, and toward a less reliable, more expensive, more congested alternative. All so the country’s richest man (who pretends to hate subsidies) can get even richer on the taxpayer dime.
This is going to be playing out in every state in the country over the next six months, and obviously the Republican states are going to be more likely to sell out their own constituents in order to make Elon Musk happy. But Democratic states may also be quick to fold on issues like Starlink subsidies and affordability provisions for fear of incurring Trump administration ire.
This pandering to Elon Musk is causing significant new delays in broadband deployments in a program Republicans complained during election season was taking too long to deploy broadband.
When Starlink inevitably struggles to handle the influx of new subsidized users and overcharges rural Americans for service, Republicans, as per tradition, will be nowhere to be found. And because a core component of the second Trump term is destroying all functional federal regulators, nobody will be able to hold Starlink accountable when that inevitable disappointment comes.
