The Corner Newsletter: Open Markets’ Next American Revolution Conference & the Supreme Court’s Accelerating Autocratic Turn (June 30, 2026)
Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we look at our transformative conference The Next American Revolution, and look at how the European Commission’s redoubled use of interim measures on Meta appears to signal a tougher enforcement stance.
Warren, Murphy, Van Hollen, Bonta, Osborn, and Acemoglu Headline OMI’s Next Revolution Conference
Last Wednesday the Open Markets Institute hosted a day-long inspirational event to shape the next phase of the fight against concentrated private power and to rebuild American liberty. “The Next American Revolution: Breaking Oligarchy and Making a New Democracy” focused on the narratives, language, ideas, strategies, and policy solutions that will empower Americans to rebuild a political economy that supports the full freedom of every person in our country, while promoting the security and independence of our nation. Three senators — Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, and Chris Van Hollen — sounded the alarm on how oligarchs and super-powerful corporations not only threaten our democracy and economy but are also tearing apart our communities and society. Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu explained how concentration of power in a few extractive institutions concentrates wealth and control and destabilizes democracy. Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn described how his background as a union leader opposing Kellogg’s closure of a processing plant in Omaha led him to his Senate bid. House representatives Greg Casar and Maggie Goodlander delivered powerful critiques of all the ways oligarchs threaten us, especially their control over information. Other speakers included former Federal Trade Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter; U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai; antitrust enforcer and scholar Sally Hubbard; pollster Celinda Lake, and; journalists Julia Angwin and David Wallace Wells of the New York Times, Dave Weigel of Semafor, and the New Republic’s Perry Bacon Jr. Watch the livestream here.
Open Markets Condemns Supreme Court’s Autocratic Decision in Trump v Slaughter.
This week the Open Markets Institute condemned the Supreme Court’s Constitution-shattering decision in Trump v. Slaughter, holding that President Trump may arbitrarily fire leaders of independent agencies.
"The Supreme Court has taken America’s gravest constitutional crisis since the Great Depression and made it vastly worse,” executive director Barry Lynn said. “By further concentrating autocratic power in the Presidency, the Court undermines basic rule of law and worsens the crisis of corruption in which the present administration sells enforcement outcomes to the corporations that offer the biggest pile of economic, political, and journalistic favors.” Open Markets legal director Sandeep Vaheesan also weighed in, saying, “Instead of following the plain text of the Constitution, respecting legislative supremacy, and honoring historical practice, the Roberts Court once again acted as a super-legislature and granted President Trump new power. The president now has broad authority to dismiss public officials for any or no reason at all.” Read the amicus brief Open Markets Institute submitted in Trump v Slaughter last year.
Europe’s Revival of Interim Measures Strengthens Commitment to Antitrust Enforcement
Claire Lavin
Earlier this month, the European Commission ordered Meta to give third-party AI assistants access to its WhatsApp messaging app while the corporation is under investigation for excluding rival assistants. The Commission has presented the move as confirmation of its commitment to strengthening enforcement of European antitrust laws.
The Commission’s decision marks only the second time that it imposed so-called “interim measures” — which allow antitrust regulators to stop a corporation from engaging in practices that are the subject of an ongoing probe.
Since the legal authority to issue a preliminary injunction was enacted more than 20 years ago, the Commission has enforced it only once before, in 2019 against Broadcom. In that instance, competition enforcers ordered the U.S. semiconductor designer and software provider to stop engaging in anticompetitive practices regarding the sale of chipsets for TV equipment.
Competition officials around the world say interim measures are particularly effective in digital markets, where abusive practices can swiftly entrench market power. In announcing the interim measures on Meta, European competition chief Teresa Ribera said that it is a critical time for AI markets and AI assistants and that Europe cannot “let large digital incumbents leverage their dominance of the past to dictate who in Europe gets to compete and who gets to innovate in AI.”
Ribera warned the Commission was prepared to use the tool again, saying, “This will be the case again if similar circumstances arise.”
Competition proceedings in Europe can be excessively long, averaging four years but sometimes taking as long as seven. During this period, the corporations charged with illegal behavior are entirely free to conduct business as usual while regulators make up their mind, but interim relief temporarily stops the firm from acting illegally. The Commission itself has recognized that parties have an incentive to extend the duration of some proceedings for as long as possible “to continue profiting from their possibly anticompetitive behavior.”
In the past, the Commission has sometimes refrained from imposing interim measures owing to the high evidentiary burden and the additional work for officials in applying them. Last year, a Commission study of enforcement actions called for a greater use of interim measures to increase the effective of law enforcement.
Interim measures can have a critical impact on an entire sector, as seen in 2020 when the French Competition Authority forced Google to negotiate in good faith with publishers over fair compensation for the use of news content. In that case, enforcers imposed daily fines to ensure compliance with interim measures. Similarly, after Brazil imposed interim measures forcing Meta to include rival AI assistants amid its own investigation, competition authorities imposed daily fines and monitored the social media giant to ensure the injunctions were respected.
On the other end of the spectrum, preliminary injunctions in the United States are rarely granted in antitrust cases because of a high evidentiary burden.
Critics have argued that such measures can violate corporations’ freedom of trade. But defenders of interim measures note that they are temporary, and that authorities take care to ensure they are balanced and proportionate. Moreover, corporations are free to appeal the decision.
DG Comp moved against Meta after the social media giant released updated terms in March that did not comply with antitrust rules despite the Commission’s warnings. The Commission has also been asked by a European cloud computing trade association to impose similar measures on Broadcom in an ongoing investigation. After Broadcom changed its policy to prohibit European cloud providers from selling its VMware software, the coalition asked the Commission to order Broadcom to suspend the change and reinstate former terms and conditions.
Open Markets Lauds EU Use of DMA to Deem Amazon and Microsoft as Cloud “Gatekeepers”
The Open Markets Institute Europe welcomed last week's preliminary decision by the European Commission to designate Amazon and Microsoft as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for their cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. "Amazon and Microsoft have exploited their dominance in cloud computing to lock in customers, lock out competitors, and extract rents from European businesses and governments,” said Max von Thun, director of OMI Europe. “Their grip on this essential infrastructure is not only holding back Europe’s AI ambitions, but it also exposes the continent to unacceptable risks of coercion, disruption, and interference by foreign actors.”
OMI Europe called on the Commission to confirm its preliminary findings as quickly as possible. OMI also called on the Commission to pursue targeted amendments to the DMA’s obligations so they fully address Big Tech’s unfair cloud practices, while ensuring that DMA enforcement works in tandem with the Data Act and proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA). (Read OMI’s full analysis on the DMA’s applicability to cloud and AI here). OMI Europe has also called on the European Commission to launch an investigation into the potential designation of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) under the DMA. While Google has a smaller market share in Europe’s cloud market than AWS and Azure, the integration of GCP into Google’s broader digital empire enhances its gatekeeper power in other markets, including AI, search, video streaming, and digital advertising.
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
The Guardian published an article by Open Markets Institute director Europe Max von Thun arguing that the European Commission’s long overdue sovereignty package, released earlier this month, doesn’t go far enough in breaking Europe’s dependence on U.S tech platforms. “Brussels fails to recognise that digital sovereignty isn’t just about who owns or controls your technology,” von Thun wrote. “It’s also about having an independent vision for how that technology is designed, developed and deployed.”
Open Markets filed an amicus brief urging the Fourth Circuit to support CareFirst of Maryland in its suit against Johnson & Johnson over the phama giant’s efforts to protect its monopoly over Stelara, one of the company’s blockbuster biologic drugs used to treat Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and other autoimmune conditions. According to the plaintiffs, Johnson & Johnson used patents to delay lower-cost biosimilar competition for 15 months, depriving patients and payors of billions of dollars in savings. Read the brief here.
Open Markets Europe policy analyst George Colville published a piece in Tech Policy Press condemning an aggressive lobbying strategy mounted by Google and Apple to reframe interoperability mandated by the EU’s Digital Markets Act as threats to user privacy and security. “Tech giants whose market dominance depends on tight control over closed platforms have responded by strategically leveraging privacy and security language as a shield against interventions that would [give] users more choice and rivals a chance to compete,” Colville wrote.
Courtney Radsch spoke at the DW Global Media Forum about how Big Tech platforms have contributed to journalism’s decline, while calling for a more pluralistic digital future that protects rights over consolidation.
Open Markets Institute helped lead a statement urging European regulators to block Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The statement warned the deal would deepen media consolidation, threaten Europe’s cinemas and creators, reduce media pluralism, and give one vertically integrated company sweeping control over film, television, news, and streaming markets. More than 25 other civil society groups joined the letter.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
Italy’s Competition Authority has become the first national enforcer to launch a probe under the EU’s Digital Markets Act with its investigation of Apple for failing to ensure its iOS and iPadOS operating systems are interoperable with rival cloud providers. (Global Competition Review)
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating UK semiconductor designer Arm Holdings over whether its chip-licensing practices illegally monopolized parts of the semiconductor market. (Bloomberg)
The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal is currently hearing a lawsuit against Google, which was sued by Kelkoo and other price-comparison websites for self-preferencing its shopping comparison services and downranking its competitors. (MLex)
📈 VITAL STAT:
50 million Eggs
The volume of product Cal-Maine Foods and other egg suppliers have agreed to donate, along with several million dollars, to settle price collusion claims by the Department of Justice and a bipartisan group of states. (Bloomberg)
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late: In Cory Doctorow’s book on AI — released less than eight months after his seminal book Enshittification — the prolific tech critic exposes the financial shenanigans behind the corporations shoveling trillions of dollars into AI even while he acknowledges the transformational potential of the technology.