“I know a bubble when I see one.”

That’s what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who led the push to create a new consumer financial regulator in the wake of the 2008 recession, told a crowd at a Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator event in Washington, DC on Wednesday. Warren warned of what she called “striking” parallels to that crisis in the AI industry. While she believes the technology has “enormous potential,” she warned that AI companies’ massive spending and borrowing practices are creating a tinderbox and Congress should step in.

Though the AI industry has grown rapidly, Warren said the pace isn’t keeping up with their spending, requiring them to borrow from opaque sources like private credit funds, without the same kind of regulatory oversight that traditional banks face. “If AI companies are unable to increase revenues with lightning speed, they won’t be able to service their massive debt loads,” Warren said. “And because of shady accounting strategies, the first big stumble will have everyone running for the exits, potentially triggering destabilizing losses in the financial sector and another 2008-style financial crisis.”

The AI companies have financed themselves in a way that ties their survival to many other sources: local banks, insurance funds, pension funds. Warren compares it to someone scaling a mountain and tying a rope around their waist that’s connected to many different places — if they fall, everything topples. The solution, according to Warren? “Cut the rope. No rope for AI.”

She compared her proposal to the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated more risky investments from commercial banking. Warren also wants a new digital regulator to take the lead on antitrust, privacy, and consumer protection enforcement, and for Congress to refuse to bail out the industry if it slips. “We cannot overstate the importance of accountability,” she said.

Ask Americans how they feel about AI and most say they have concerns. Communities have mounted resistance to data center projects, stalling them across the US. On social media, anger at AI companies and executives is unrestrained — sometimes to the point of condoning violence.

But look at the issues that most campaigns are focused on, and AI is far less prevalent, experts say.

More than 60 percent of both Republicans and Democrats polled by Ipsos earlier this year agree that the government should regulate AI for economic stability and public safety, and that the technology’s development should slow down. Still, “when you just ask folks, ‘what’s on your mind?’ AI and data centers aren’t rising to the top of the list —  at least not yet,” says lead pollster for Ipsos Public Affairs Alec Tyson.

For now, broad topics like the economy and immigration remain priorities for many voters. “There’s a certain amount of oxygen for the top issues that Americans have on their mind, and we are living in a very active moment,” Tyson says. “The amount of available space or potential for another issue to break through, it has to be a pretty acute or powerful concern. And we’re just not seeing that at the national level with AI yet.”

There’s also a lack of clear partisan lines. Data Center Watch, a group that tracks data center projects and their opposition, found 55 percent of politicians who publicly opposed large projects were Republicans and 45 percent were Democrats. There’s also bipartisan concern over AI chatbot companions’ impact on kids. While Republican politicians have led the push to override state AI laws, there’s still disagreement within both parties

Even so, with months left until the election, debates — and outright fights — over AI are heating up. Tech executives warn that their companies will upend people’s lives — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned AI could eliminate half of entry-level white collar jobs, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp has said that Democratic voters could see a hit to their economic power while “working-class, often male voters” benefit. Activists have pushed back. Most efforts are peaceful, including protests and messages to lawmakers. But some opposition has turned violent. Three suspects allegedly attacked Sam Altman’s home in two separate attacks over a matter of days, and some responses on social media have suggested the attacks were justified. Similar to the gleeful response from many in the public after the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, the violence has highlighted a simmering frustration among Americans.

Meanwhile, well-funded interest groups are already spending millions on lobbying. “A lot of political science has well-documented that everyday Americans in some ways follow the rhetoric or position of the leaders they align with,” Tyson says. Groups like Brad Carson’s Americans for Responsible Innovation are focused on educating policymakers about AI to prepare them for coming policy debates. Carson, a former Democratic congressman, opposes efforts to override state AI regulations and is also part of Public First Action, which is affiliated with super PACs (political action committees) dedicated to supporting candidates that will back public safeguards against AI. They’re an answer to Leading the Future, a super PAC funded primarily by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and tech investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Leading the Future has raised $140 million, according to Axios, while Public First Action has $50 million cash on hand — $20 million of which is from Anthropic.

Data centers have already become a flashpoint at the local level. Opposition to these projects has blocked or delayed $64 billion worth of development across the country, according to Data Center Watch. At the federal level, lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) support a pause on data center development. 

Candidates running on key AI platforms have already seen money from groups like LTF and PFA poured into their races. That’s what happened to New York State lawmaker Alex Bores, who is currently running for reelection and cosponsored a bill originally meant to add safety and transparency requirements for large AI model developers. Despite LTF’s larger war chest, Carson believes public opinion is on his side, and says now is the time to push back against efforts to block state regulations.

Concerns over job loss could also rise to the top of voters’ AI concerns as soon as this summer, according to Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit that aims to “defend humanity” in the AI age. “Based on what the technology is doing, and based on what leaders in the industry are saying about the technology, I think that gives me a signal that it could happen really fast,” he says. Jobs impact is also a key concern for many in Gen Z, says Tyson.

The Alliance runs an online tracker of layoffs attributed to AI. So far, it’s tallied over 110,000 job losses in the US. Many have been at large tech companies — 30,000 came from layoffs at Oracle alone. But Steinhauser believes the threat may soon become more broadly tangible, as job loss is expected to hit everything from the legal profession to general administrative jobs. “That’s when I think it’s going to really be a much more salient issue across the country,” he says.

Carson says that he consistently hears from pollsters that “they’ve never seen an issue rise up those ranks faster than AI is.” While many voters may not spontaneously mention it, “if you introduce the idea of AI and then raise things like price concerns or job concerns, they’re very salient.” But it still may be hard to vote based on that. “The candidates themselves aren’t necessarily clearly differentiated on how they want to approach AI because it’s a nascent and emerging issue,” he says.

If voters aren’t (yet) closely tuned into AI issues, why are industry leaders spending millions on campaigns? Experts say it’s because there’s still more to be gained. “That public story is a little bit different from who actually has power,” says Purdue University associate political science professor Daniel Schiff. Headlines about Anthropic’s decision to hold its ground against the Pentagon and mass domestic surveillance, for example, might not reach many American voters, he said, but could help with “positioning themselves with respect to the government.”

Carson says AI is “a great issue to run on” because “most politicians are just now waking up to how powerful public sentiment is about guardrails on AI. But you’re going to see more and more people embrace it because an entrepreneurial politician sees the opening here.” Sure, the billionaires behind Leading the Future “will try to destroy you, but there’s a limit to that, right? They can’t destroy us all.”

After a jury found that Live Nation-Ticketmaster violated antitrust law on several counts, the company warns in a blog post that the verdict “is not the last word on this matter.”

The company plans to renew a motion for the judge to issue a ruling against the states, claiming that they did not prove their case as a matter of law. It also awaits the court’s decision on a separate motion to strike the testimony of one of the states’ expert witness, whose analysis they say helped inform the jury’s damages award. The jury found that Ticketmaster overcharged consumers $1.72 per ticket.

“Of course, Live Nation can and will appeal any unfavorable rulings on these motions,” the blog post says.

The jury’s damages award is limited to tickets sold at just 257 venues, representing 20 percent of total tickets, the company says. Live Nation argues the up to $280 million it pledged in its settlement with the Justice Department and a handful of states will ultimately prove larger than the sum based on the jury award. Judge Arun Subramanian is expected to rule on the final damages total and other relief — including a possible break-up — after a separate proceeding. “We remain confident that the ultimate outcome of the States’ case will not be materially different than what is envisioned by the DOJ settlement,” the company says.

Consumer complaints about Ticketmaster are so voluminous at state attorneys general offices that Pennsylvania’s comes with an explicit plea for residents lodging a grievance about the company to be patient for a response. That kind of pressure has driven more than 30 states to push forward with claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster illegally monopolized parts of the concert industry, even when the federal government settled its claims. Soon it will be up to a jury to decide if the ways Live Nation-Ticketmaster conducts its business is not just frustrating, but also illegal. 

An antitrust trial that began March 2nd against Live Nation-Ticketmaster is coming to a close on Thursday. State AGs who pushed forward with their claims after the Justice Department settled one week in took a gamble. They were betting that they could not only win the case, but also get more relief for their constituents, and permanently change the competitive dynamics of music touring in the US, including through a potential breakup of the industry mainstay. The states argued that Live Nation-Ticketmaster maintained its monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive behavior, including leveraging its power in concert promotions and its broad control of amphitheaters across the country to coerce concert venues into using its ticketing platform, even when they preferred not to. 

Live Nation pushed back on this narrative, calling on witnesses from its own staff and other industry players who testified to the quality of its services, and the fierce competition it faces. If the jury buys this argument, the DOJ’s deal may look better than its detractors initially thought. But a verdict in the states’ favor opens the potential for sweeping industry change.

The trial faced rocky moments nearly from the jump, after the DOJ’s settlement left state plaintiffs scrambling to litigate on their own. The judge accused both Live Nation and the DOJ of failing to inform him of the status of a deal early enough, and the settlement itself has drawn criticism from players in the concert industry and some of the states that are pressing forward.

It could take a matter of hours or days for the jury to reach a verdict, and a finding in the states’ favor could be the first step toward a breakup of the company. But whatever they decide will almost certainly lead to a long road of appeals.

A threat or reality?

One storyline the jury has heard throughout the trial revolves around a dispute between the ex-CEO of the Barclays Center John Abbamondi and Live Nation’s Michael Rapino. Abbamondi was the government’s first witness, questioned by the DOJ while they were still a party to the case. He described a phone call where he claimed Rapino implicitly threatened to pull concerts from the arena if it did not continue its ticketing deal with Ticketmaster. In a recording of the call played in court, Rapino drops an F-bomb and is audibly upset, saying it might be a “tough time to deliver tickets or concerts with a new competitor in town.” This was this kind of alleged threat that drove SeatGeek to offer retaliation insurance to venues it tried to win over from Ticketmaster, SeatGeek’s CEO later testified. 

When Rapino took the stand, he said his frustration was aimed at a disagreement over Abbamondi’s interpretation of Barclays existing contract with Ticketmaster. He was simply conveying the reality that a new nearby arena would likely take business from Barclays. He claimed Abbamondi was “trying to trap me” by bringing up concert promotion in that discussion, Bloomberg reported, and that he expected a chance to match SeatGeek’s offer and was “caught flat footed” when he was denied one. 

The states also called on a Live Nation employee Ben Baker whose internal chats with a colleague bragging about “robbing” fans “blind” with costs for things like parking were exposed during the trial. Baker, now head of ticketing for Live Nation venues, said the 2022 chats were “immature and regrettable,” Bloomberg reported. Rapino condemned the behavior and said he hadn’t been aware of it until this trial, and said he planned to “deal with” the issue that week. 

The jury also heard from the CEO of Oak View Group, a venue management company that had a deal with Ticketmaster that incentivized it to steer venues to use the ticketing platform. In a separate case, OVG’s previous CEO, Tim Leiweke, was accused by the DOJ of bid-rigging, which led his company to sign a non-prosecution agreement last year acknowledging the arrangement understood to be with Ticketmaster. (Leiweke was later pardoned by President Donald Trump). On the stand in the monopolization case, current OVG CEO Chris Granger testified that he didn’t know why OVG didn’t disclose the Ticketmaster deal to clients, but that “we should have,” Law360 reported. Even so, he maintained that Ticketmaster is a superior platform to competitors like SeatGeek and AXS.

The states’ economic expert Rosa Abrantes-Metz testified that Ticketmaster keeps, on average, an extra $2.30 for every ticket sold, according to Courthouse News Service, compared to a competitor. Most of that is paid by concertgoers, she said. Her testimony turned into a legal flashpoint when Live Nation accused Abrantes-Metz of committing perjury by saying she relied on the way Ticketmaster internally calculates the portion of a ticket price that it keeps in determining her damages calculations. The company said this is false and moved to strike her testimony, saying that her analysis falls apart without the alleged lie. Judge Arun Subramanian said he’d reserve judgement on her testimony, suggesting it seemed to be more of a  misunderstanding, rather than perjury, according to Inner City Press.

Ticketmaster makes its defense

After the states rested their case, Live Nation got a chance to call up its own witnesses to complicate the narrative. Witnesses testifying in its defense said that Ticketmaster offers the superior product on the market, and that battles to promote artists and win venues are hard-fought on the merits. Drake’s manager Adel Nur raved about Live Nation, saying they had the “most fair relationship,” with the promoter who would go “above and beyond to service him,” with multimillion dollar bonuses according to CNS.

Live Nation has to compete intensely to win over artists to promote their concerts, executives argued. The company’s president of touring Omar Al-joulani told the jury that Live Nation has lost out on big names like Morgan Wallen and Bruce Springsteen. “I can’t stress telling you how competitive the business is,” he said, according to CNS. Similarly, when concert venues choose a ticketing platform, Rapino testified, those venues make the ultimate decisions, including on things like exclusivity arrangements. “I don’t tell the billionaire what to do with his venue. He tells me,” Rapino testified, according to Bloomberg, apparently referring to venue owners.

Ticketmaster’s vice president of commercial strategy Jennifer Johnson testified that it’s often clients who want to lock in exclusive deals for longer periods, and that such an arrangement actually presents more risk for Ticketmaster, Big Tech on Trial reported. Jurors have heard from other witnesses that venues may like exclusive contracts for a sense of stability and continuity. Late in the trial, the plaintiffs actually moved to voluntarily dismiss their own claim of unlawful exclusive dealing against Live Nation. On cross-examination, Johnson acknowledged that until at least 2024, sales representatives were incentivized with bonuses to renew venue contracts and extend their terms.

Jurors also got to hear another side of the Barclays Center story from the arena’s chief entertainment officer Laurie Jacoby. Things weren’t going smoothly at the Barclays Center before the arena decided to switch back from SeatGeek to Ticketmaster, Jacoby testified. There were problems when tickets went on sale for The Strokes and My Chemical Romance, she said, according to Inner City Press. That made it difficult to attract artists, which is why they switched back, she said. Other venue executives also described Ticketmaster as a superior choice to competitors on the merits, and Live Nation’s economic expert argued there’s no evidence it’s exercised monopoly power.

Finally, there was yet another conflict between the states and Live Nation over one defense witness who had returned to Live Nation after leaving competitor AEG. Live Nation accused the states of “improperly attempting to dissuade a witness from testifying and/or influence his testimony,” after obtaining information about his departure from AEG. Live Nation asked the judge to sanction the states as a result, which the states charged was an unwarranted attempt at “sweeping, prejudicial relief.” Subramanian partially denied the sanctions request, but reserved judgement on the rest, ordering AEG to explain why he shouldn’t make them pay monetary sanctions for disclosing the witness’ personnel information.

Still, this and other skirmishes took place outside of the jury’s earshot, so it won’t directly factor into their decision. Their determination of whether Live Nation is an illegal monopoly could come down to what they view as a threat or standard business talk. If Live Nation wins, the DOJ’s settlement may look more appealing to opponents. But a finding in the states’ favor could potentially lead to a breakup.

“It’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.”

That quote was first delivered by mob boss Michael Corleone in The Godfather, but last Monday, it became the title of a speech by the Justice Department’s acting antitrust chief Omeed Assefi. At a George Washington University event co-hosted with the publication MLex, Assefi described an agency firing on all cylinders, standing strong against bad corporate actors when warranted, but being open to reasonable negotiation to reach the strongest possible result.

Implicitly, Assefi was responding to months of complaints that his agency was bowing to corporate lobbyists and striking weak settlements. Last summer, two top deputies to Assefi’s former boss, Gail Slater, were fired for what the agency called “insubordination”; one later claimed two Justice Department officials had “perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law.” In February, Slater abruptly departed the agency, following reports that she’d been sidelined on key decisions (which the DOJ denied). Weeks later, the agency settled its high-profile battle with Live Nation-Ticketmaster in a decision industry players described as baffling. And just days before Assefi’s speech at GW, The Wall Street Journal published the fullest account yet of the events leading up to Slater’s departure and the settlement with Live Nation, describing backroom dealings between the Trump administration and MAGA-aligned lobbyists like Mike Davis, who tweeted, “Good riddance” when Slater left. The DOJ has denied any untoward dealings.

At the Antitrust Division, though, Assefi said his staff was “tuning out the noise and focusing on helping the American people who we are so privileged to serve.” The Division’s job, he said, is to engage in an “unrelenting pursuit of holding wrongdoers accountable.” He then quoted Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II: “this is the business we’ve chosen.”

Much of the antitrust world seems markedly skeptical. As lawyers descended on DC for the American Bar Association’s annual Antitrust Spring Meeting last week, hope that President Donald Trump’s administration would take anti-monopoly concerns seriously seemed deflated. Former enforcers warned of creeping corporate influence and a backsliding of enforcement. While Assefi and other officials pushed back on the criticism, onetime allies questioned whether they’d ever been serious about enforcing the law. 

At an event later in the week, Roger Alford, one of Slater’s fired antitrust deputies, compared Assefi to a different cinematic criminal: corrupt police chief Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca. The acting antitrust chief was “doing his best Captain Renault impression of, ‘I’m shocked, shocked that there’s gambling in this establishment,’” Alford said. “And essentially what we have now is disingenuous claims that we are shocked, shocked at any suggestion that there’s politics in antitrust enforcement at the federal level.”

Now, the question on most people’s lips isn’t whether the Trump administration cares about antitrust — it’s whether anyone else has the resources to step in.

During the first year of Trump’s second administration in 2025, a delicate coalition of bipartisan populist antitrust enforcement was still tenuously holding together. The week of that Spring Meeting saw Slater speak at a Y Combinator event in downtown DC that hosted both former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan — whom Vice President JD Vance had once praised as one of the few Biden officials “doing a pretty good job.” But the administration was already pushing potential allies away. The DOJ and Federal Trade Commission had barred leaders from attending the Spring Meeting, believing the ABA aligned with Democrats. The administration had gutted federal regulatory agencies, raising questions about how they could still function as effective watchdogs.

Freed of their employment and thus the Trump administration’s restrictions, both Slater and Alford appeared at the Spring Meeting this year. Slater was met with applause during her surprise appearance on the keynote panel. “I’m really happy to be here this year while I still have my law license,” Alford quipped, appearing to reference a conservative effort to have him disciplined by the DC bar for speaking out about what he saw at the DOJ. 

While some individuals and a large chunk of Republican state AGs still appear committed to big monopoly trials, former allies appear shaken by the administration’s recent settlements. “We should have as our working assumption that the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission will not engage in serious enforcement of the antitrust laws for the next three years,” Alford said on a panel at the ABA event. One exception, he said, might be Big Tech cases where he says there’s lobbyists “on both sides and so they kind of cancel each other out.” Those cases could include an appeal of a remedies ruling in the Google search case, an appeal of the FTC’s loss in the Meta alleged monopolization case, and two additional alleged monopolization cases that haven’t yet gone to trial against Amazon and Apple.

Speaking with reporters after, Alford expressed surprise at how everything had unfolded in the past year. “We just didn’t know that we were going to be overruled in the way that we were. I mean, it never happened like that in the first administration ever,” Alford said. He believed Slater was and is “a true populist” who “wanted to enforce the laws, and we were kind of all just shocked by it all.” Asked if higher-ups at the DOJ were ever serious about aggressive antitrust enforcement, Alford was unsure. “I guess not. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to tell.”

Former Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, a Democrat who was fired by President Donald Trump last year, said he’s also not sure whether this administration was ever serious about going after Big Tech and monopolies generally. “I think some people were, but I don’t know,” he told The Verge on the sidelines of an event hosted by American Economic Liberties Project (AELP).

Bedoya and Alford are among those who are now placing their hopes in state enforcers to carry the torch for aggressive antitrust enforcement. There’s reason to do so: while six states with Republican AGs settled alongside the DOJ, 34 AGs chose to continue litigating against Live Nation, including 13 Republicans. Several state AGs have committed to taking on other cases that federal enforcers have chosen not to, like the merger between media companies Nexstar and Tegna. Bedoya pointed to several Republican AGs he believes are carrying out aggressive antitrust enforcement, and said, “it’s really important to separate what’s happening with this administration, with people who call themselves Democrats and Republicans. This is a very specific brand of governing that I think is very separate from what you’re seeing at the state level.”

“What is happening right now is not normal, it is not acceptable, and it is dangerous. And the extent to which people become tolerant of this state of affairs, that poses a long-term threat to our future,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said at the AELP event. “Right now, we are seeing states and state attorneys general as a check on lawlessness and corruption at the federal level that we haven’t seen since Watergate.”

Weiser, who is part of the coalition continuing to litigate the Live Nation case, said they have “more evidence of a monopoly abusing its monopoly power than I thought I might ever see in my lifetime … if you think about the delta from the quality of the evidence to the weakness of the settlement, it’s embarrassing.” Live Nation has denied the claims and is currently putting on its defense in court.

Still, state resources are dwarfed by the federal government’s, and the more cases they need to take on by themselves, the more stretched they’ll become. Weiser said that if the federal government wouldn’t enforce antitrust laws, Congress should allocate funds to the states to do so. Absent that, Weiser admitted it won’t be easy to take on the workload, but “when you are forced, when you are stretched, and when you are inspired, there’s a lot you can do.”

At an event hosted by FGS Global and Semafor, the DOJ’s Assefi praised states’ role in enforcing antitrust laws. “I hope the states can bite off as much as they’re saying they’re going to and be able to chew it, but it’s challenging,” he said. He defended the DOJ’s settlement as “a great win” and said they got “more relief than anyone in history ever has against Live Nation.” That relief includes a cap on some Ticketmaster service fees, more transparency for artists, and letting other promoters book into 13 amphitheatres it operates. Up to this point, no one else has gotten as much out of the company as his team did, he said.

Responding to claims of undue corporate influence on stage next to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Assefi shook off the criticism as typical politics. “I think it’s important to know that lobbyists weren’t created in 2025. They’ve been around for a long time,” Assefi said. “We’ll meet with anybody… but that doesn’t entitle you to anything and certainly not entitled to outcomes.” News reports make those lobbyists “seem much more powerful and stronger than they are,” he said. “We sometimes read these articles and you just laugh like, ‘Oh, really?’” 

Ferguson’s tone was more defiant. “There’s lobbying. It’s Washington. It doesn’t affect my decision-making,” Ferguson said. “I get that the press enjoys the salaciousness of it. I also am convinced that part of what’s going on here is that the press enjoys writing stories about people who in the last administration, and the administration before that, weren’t lobbyists because all the lobbyists were Democrats on K Street. And now it’s some Republicans, and it’s really fun for the press to write about.”

The Trump administration’s “strictly business” approach ostensibly amounts to something friendlier than gangster tech regulation. There’s no threat of leg-breaking — just the promise of cutting mutually beneficial deals. Is that a viable substitute for playing antitrust cop? The results of the Live Nation trial might offer some indication: If the states lose, the DOJ’s settlement might remain the largest concession extracted from the company, but if they win, it could look like a weak compromise. The upcoming Big Tech cases will test the limits of corporate lobbying and the strength of agencies to play hardball. In the meantime, states may find themselves wondering if their federal counterparts are leaving the gun and taking the cannoli.