The Trump administration’s antitrust honeymoon is over

Policy Report Antitrust The Trump administration’s antitrust honeymoon is over A once-bipartisan coalition is no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt. A once-bipartisan coalition is no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt. by Lauren Feiner Apr 1, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Lauren Feiner is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. “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 ...