Ticketmaster Acts as Illegal Monopoly, Jury Decides in Landmark Ruling

On Wednesday, a federal jury found massive entertainment company Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, guilty of holding a monopoly on “major concert venues” and forcing artists to book via Ticketmaster or risk losing access to their amenities—a violation of federal antitrust laws. Remedies have yet to be determined.

The verdict was reached after four days of deliberations in a closely-watched trial in New York federal court. It comes after years of criticism of Live Nation’s predatory ticketing practices, and will likely completely change the face of the music industry from here on out. It also ends a long antitrust battle against Live Nation that Merrick Garland’s DOJ began in 2019.

The Department of Justice and 40 states sued Live Nation in 2024 for controlling “virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem” along with Ticketmaster. In a move that surprised many of the states, and even the judge overseeing the case, Trump’s Justice Department decided to settle with Live Nation a week into trial for $281 million. Judge Arun Subramanian called the move “totally unacceptable,” given the lack of transparency from the DOJ. To make matters even worse, a whopping 34 of the 40 states involved rejected the settlement and chose to continue the trial without the DOJ’s help.

This story has been updated.

Six House Republicans sided with the Democratic Party Wednesday, forcing a vote on a bill that could expand protections for Haitian immigrants.

Republican Representatives María Elvira Salazar (Florida), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), Mike Lawler (New York), Don Bacon (Nebraska), Carlos Giménez (Florida), and Nicole Malliotakis (New York) voted alongside 212 House Democrats and one independent to advance a vote to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians for three years.

“I have one of the largest Haitian populations in the country in my district,” Lawler told The Washington Post. “If you end [temporary protections] without addressing work authorization, it will cause a huge crisis in our health care system, especially in an area like mine, where a lot of our Haitian TPS holders are nurses.”

The minority party utilized a discharge petition to bring the issue to the House floor, circumventing the whims of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Donald Trump.

Politicians across the country have argued that ending TPS for Haitians would threaten the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families, disrupt state economies, and jeopardize the futures of the population’s American-born children.

Haitians have become a favorite target of the MAGA movement in recent years. In 2024, several prominent members of the party—including then–vice presidential candidate JD Vance—hurled racist and baseless accusations against Haitian immigrants in Ohio, claiming that they were causing “constant car crashes” and were capturing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

The Trump administration set an effective end date for TPS for Haiti of September 2, 2025, a decision that was expected to affect more than 348,000 people in the U.S. But the effort has since been held up in the judiciary as lower courts stepped in to prevent the suspension.

The admin has appealed the matter to the Supreme Court, which will hear the government’s argument on April 29. Nineteen attorneys general have jointly filed an amicus brief imploring the nation’s highest court to uphold Haitians’ legal status.

The Pentagon received direct orders from President Trump to prepare for a military escalation in Cuba, according to multiple reports this week.

USA Today and Zeteo, both citing anonymous sources, report that the Pentagon is ramping up planning for a military operation in Cuba, should Trump make the call. Zeteo noted that the order came straight from the White House.

Trump has been threatening Cuba for months now, and in January signed an executive order imposing tariffs on countries that attempted to send oil there, essentially imposing a catastrophic oil blockade on the island. On Monday, he said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” in reference to his war on Iran, which still has no tangible end in sight. And last month, Trump said of Cuba that “it may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter.... They have no energy. They have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis.”

Trump’s oil and aid blockade of Cuba has caused rampant human suffering on the island, as Cubans have experienced blackouts, food shortages, and inflation. While the Trump administration has framed this economic strangling as a liberatory endeavor, this kind of military escalation in a country that hasn’t been a threat in decades points to plans to impose its own agenda on Cuba and the rest of the Western hemisphere.

Utah Senator Mike Lee got help from the Trump administration on his disastrous plot to execute a large-scale sell-off of public lands—only to be left behind weeks later.

In June, Lee introduced a controversial measure to sell off 4.2 million acres of public land as an amendment to Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, after consulting with the Department of the Interior, Public Domain reported Wednesday.

The agency shared technical data about the proposal with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which Lee is the chair, according to internal emails obtained by the Wilderness Society. The department also offered feedback on the proposal, which Lee used to craft talking points and respond to concerns.

In one email chain on June 10, Chris Prandoni, the committee’s deputy staff director, asked two Interior Department staffers to approve a quote that would accurately reflect the agency’s research.

“This is the quote I’ve been working up with your guys to accurately reflect your research: ‘The Department of the Interior estimates that the Bureau of Land Management has about 1.2 million acres of land within 1 mile of a population city center and another 800,000 acres within 1-5 miles of a population center. Much of this land may qualify for disposal under this section,’” Prandoni wrote.

Jeremy Arendt, who serves as the Interior’s deputy assistant secretary of natural resources and infrastructure, urged Lee’s staff to “include a % of total acres this represents for [the Bureau of Land Management], which is about 0.7% of the total, or about 30% of lands within 5 miles of population centers.”

“Good to go on the quoted content. Thanks for running it by us!” wrote Greg Wischer, the Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

“Thanks, guys. See some of you all tomorrow,” Prandoni replied, implying that staff from the Senate committee would meet with Interior staff in person the next day, when Lee would announce his amendment to Trump’s massive budget reconciliation bill.

But just two weeks later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tried to distance the Trump administration from Lee’s outrageous proposal.

“It’s not a central topic. I don’t think anybody is really thinking about it up there,” Burgum told Scripps News, later adding: “It doesn’t matter to me at all if it’s part of this bill, because it’s not something that’s—it wasn’t part of the president’s agenda to be part of this bill in the first place.”

Ultimately, Lee’s massive sell-off wasn’t included in Trump’s behemoth budget bill. But contrary to what Burgum said, the privatization of federal lands is definitely a part of Trump’s agenda, even if it wasn’t for that particular bill.

American Catholic bishops are pushing back against the Trump administration after Vice President JD Vance warned Pope Leo XIV to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology” and invoked “just war” theory at a Turning Point USA event Tuesday.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents Catholic leaders across the country, issued a statement Wednesday from its chairman on doctrine, Bishop James Massa, in which he defended the pope’s opposition to the Iran war.

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” Massa said in his statement. “That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’”

Massa said that the pope wasn’t just “offering opinions on theology” but “preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”

President Trump called the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in a Truth Social post Sunday, and Vance, who converted to Catholicism seven years ago, tried to defend him at Tuesday’s event in Georgia, claiming that God supports just wars—a stark contrast to the pope’s assertion that “anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

“Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?” Vance said to a sparse crowd. “I certainly think the answer is yes.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the same talking point on Wednesday, saying that “there’s something called the just war doctrine” and it is a “very well settled matter of Christian theology.”

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led war in Iran has killed an estimated 1,700 civilians in the country and damaged at least 17 Iranian health care facilities and 22 schools. Perhaps Vance and his boss in the White House need to take some moral direction from higher authority on what a just war actually is.