The Next Lina Khan Is Your State Attorney General

Disgruntled Taylor Swift fans started the crusade to break up concert promotion behemoth Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s owner.

But it’s a group of 34 ideologically disparate state attorneys general from Albany to Nashville to Sacramento — not federal trust-busters — who are now close to finishing it.

Their success last month in persuading a federal jury that Live Nation is acting as a monopoly</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/arts/music/live-nation-antitrust-trial-verdict-monopoly.html","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Live Nation is acting as a monopoly, coupled with a less muscular Trump administration posture on antitrust, is resonating well beyond the entertainment space, and emboldening state attorneys general in both parties looking to expand their authority. Many of them are now plotting to use their antitrust powers more aggressively — and, in the process, accelerate a shift of regulatory power away from Washington.

Ask a state attorney general, blue or red, where they’d like to focus their attention, and the answers span the economy: mergers and consolidation in technology and AI, health care, housing, energy and power, restaurants and so-called algorithmic collusion cases in agriculture, hotels and more.

What may be less obvious: This means companies and policymakers will need to contend with state attorneys general with interests that diverge from the federal government’s — and sometimes from each other.

“We’ll see more aggressive antitrust enforcement, I have no doubt, in the future from the DOJ. But in the meantime, as the states get better and more invested in it, they’re going to have a seat at the table regardless,” said Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general and a former chief counsel to Republican Gov. Bill Lee.

Skrmetti was one of eight Republican attorneys general and 26 Democrats who rejected a settlement with Live Nation</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/09/live-nation-states-oppose-settlement-agreement-00819029","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0002","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0003","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>rejected a settlement with Live Nation that the Trump administration brokered and sprang on AGs in March</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/09/live-nation-reaches-settlement-with-doj-in-antitrust-fight-00818564","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0004","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0005","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Trump administration brokered and sprang on AGs in March after a two-year antitrust probe that began during the Biden administration, following the 2022 ticketing debacle ahead of Swift’s Eras tour.

Instead of agreeing to the deal, the 34 state officials brought in corporate antitrust lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, proceeded to trial without the Justice Department and persuaded a federal jury that Live Nation was acting as a monopoly — a decision that could lead to the company’s breakup as a federal judge considers remedies this spring.

The Trump administration’s increasingly permissive approach on corporate consolidation — a stark turnabout from Biden Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive approach — is prompting some AGs to enter the fray with new urgency. And it’s further accelerating some states’ efforts to expand their roles as economic enforcers.

The White House and Justice Department did not respond to questions about antitrust policy.

As if on cue this week, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom got into the game, proposing a $25 million expansion</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/05/california-plots-antitrust-offensive-citing-trump-pullback-00925030","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0006","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff821f0007","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>proposing a $25 million expansion of the state’s antitrust operation and powers.

In a case gathering increasing buzz, California’s Rob Bonta led a group of AGs in freezing the Trump-endorsed merger of Nexstar and Tegna, which would create the biggest local broadcast television company in the country — and subsequently picked up Trump ally and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach as a supporter. Bonta said last week</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.semafor.com/article/05/12/2026/paramount-seeks-to-calm-californias-creatives-and-a-litigious-attorney-general","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>said last week that the Trump-backed Paramount-Warner Brothers deal features “red flags everywhere for us.”

Power giant NextEra’s proposed acquisition of Virginia’s Dominion Energy, which would create a massive power conglomerate along the East Coast, is likely to get President Donald Trump’s blessing — and draw state-level scrutiny</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/19/power-companies-merger-lower-bills-affordability-politics-00927494?_native_ads=1&font_scale=1.0","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200002","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200003","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>and draw state-level scrutiny from Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones and others.

And it’s worth remembering that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who won Trump’s endorsement this week in his Senate primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn, built his national MAGA reputation in part by making Texas a key player on antitrust cases.

State involvement in preventing monopolies is far from new, of course. State attorneys general started banding together back in the early 1900s as part of the effort to break up Standard Oil; they regularly leverage the 1890 Sherman Act and the 1914 Clayton Act to target antitrust violations within and across states. Over the last decade, state attorneys general have often taken the lead in probes of pharmaceutical and big tech companies. Some states, including Washington, Colorado and California, have passed laws mandating “pre-merger notification” for companies, similar to requirements under federal law.

Antitrust fervor varies across presidential administrations. But state legal officials of both parties say they knew a more dramatic shift was coming when Trump’s DOJ antitrust chief, Gail Slater, resigned in February after less than a year.

Slater, a former adviser to Vice President JD Vance, had come into the Justice Department in 2025 promising an “America First” brand of populist trust-busting</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/09/gail-slater-donald-trump-antitrust-00277348","_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200004","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-5a12-d62d-afde-ffff82200005","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>an “America First” brand of populist trust-busting aimed at bringing massive corporations, including tech companies perceived as anti-conservative, to heel. But she also continued some Biden-era investigations championed by Khan and former assistant attorney general for antitrust Jonathan Kanter, including the Live Nation probe.

When Slater left amid growing Trump administration tensions over corporate mergers and personnel, “we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but we thought it might portend a less aggressive posture,” Skrmetti told me last week. “We’re still getting a sense of what the new landscape looks like.”

Democratic attorneys general are more direct in describing what they see as a federal withdrawal from aggressive antitrust enforcement and a more political, transactional approach to mergers from the Trump administration — and in arguing that states now have little choice but to step into the vacuum.

“We just simply cannot trust or depend on that the feds will be there,” said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state has a relatively large antitrust division. “Even with our resources, we have always relied on DOJ and FTC partnership.”

Ultimately, six of the original 14 Republican attorneys general in the coalition — those from Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota — backed the Trump settlement in March. Brown, a former Army judge-advocate-general who served in Iraq and was then appointed a federal prosecutor by Biden, gives “a lot of credit to states like Tennessee and South Carolina, Kansas,” that did not.

“A number of the Republican states got personal, direct outreach and pressure [from the Trump administration] to settle that case and to join the settlement. And kudos to those that resisted on behalf of their constituents,” Brown said.

Tennessee’s Skrmetti wouldn’t comment on any Trump administration pressure. “The administration has the right to adopt its own policies and its own enforcement priorities,” he said. “But where we see a problem for consumers in Tennessee, we will act using the authority that we have under state law, regardless of what the federal government does.”

The White House referred questions about the Live Nation settlement to the Justice Department, and the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

These dynamics go beyond antitrust: As a polarized Congress leaves major questions on AI, energy and other issues unresolved, and as policy debates shift to the state level, attorneys general in both parties are increasingly asserting their authority on issues of economic policy. Skrmetti notes that when it comes to the regulation of artificial intelligence, for instance, Congress’ failure to act means that “the states are the only line of defense.”

For ambitious and savvy attorneys general, antitrust isn’t just good policy — it’s typically smart politics at a moment when the cost of living dominates. It’s no coincidence that more than half a dozen state attorneys general are running for governor this year.

Some antitrust efforts will be bipartisan — some decidedly not. Democratic state attorneys general, meanwhile, have become more aggressive in using antitrust laws to go after oil and gas companies; Republicans have used the same laws to go after corporate climate initiatives.

It’s consumer protection where antitrust interests often align across parties: The Live Nation coalition, for instance, was unusually bipartisan, ranging from New York Attorney General and Trump nemesis Letitia James and California’s Bonta to Skrmetti, a conservative best known for defending Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors before the Supreme Court.

Given the significant cost of running antitrust cases, banding together and pooling resources is attractive to most states without the resources of a California or a New York.

“Sometimes it’s a matter of who puts their hand up first, and sometimes it’s a matter of who has the extra resources — and then you’ve got to make sure they’re part of it, because you have a lot of work to do,” Skrmetti said.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield — who led two successful multistate challenges to the Trump tariff regime over the past year — is asking the Oregon legislature for more funding to expand antitrust work. Last week, he led a call with Bonta, James, Brown and Nevada’s Aaron Ford to draw attention to Democrats’ increasingly coordinated antitrust efforts.

“If enforcement will wax and wane with each federal administration, that’s not good for continuity. So we are putting plans in place to hold the line on important cases and build infrastructure to sustain enforcement,” Rayfield told me. “We have to figure out how to do this sustainably long-term if this new norm persists.”

Companies eyeing a merger, take note: State attorneys general will no longer be in the so-called second seat in antitrust cases, and that could lead to a patchwork of different approaches across states.

“You’re going to see a lot of different lines of inquiry coming from states now that maybe in the past you would have seen less varied interest,” Washington state’s Brown said.

Even within the consumer protection realm, Democratic- and Republican-led states are not going to approach every antitrust investigation in the same way. “There is a worry that if the states get too aggressive, and if antitrust law becomes untethered from a clear, objective standard, it’s going to be really hard for businesses to operate,” Skrmetti said. “There are differences in philosophy. … So you may see those tensions play out as well.”

Indeed, the business community in California, for example, is pushing back against Newsom’s bid to expand the state’s antitrust powers, which — given California’s size and economic influence — would have considerable national impact, much like New York’s.

Considering Newsom’s 2028 ambitions and his reputation as a lightning rod, his proposal is likely to drive debate.

But as long as the cost of living — and the concentration of corporate power — continue to drive the American political discourse, state attorneys general will have plenty of incentives to wield their antitrust power beyond the end of the Trump era.

“The landscape,” Skrmetti said, “has shifted in hopefully a permanent way.”

المصدر: Politico