"A bid to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.
Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.
The Justice Department discussions have intensified in the wake of Judge Amit Mehta’s Aug. 5 ruling that Google illegally monopolized the markets of online search and search text ads. Google has said it will appeal that decision, but Mehta has ordered both sides to begin plans for the second phase of the case, which will involve the government’s proposals for restoring competition, including a possible breakup request.
The US plan will need to be accepted by Mehta, who would direct the company to comply. A forced breakup of Google would be the biggest of a US company since AT&T was dismantled in the 1980s."
Trump's Justice Department is seeking to remove the seditious conspiracy indictment against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. We should n
Steven Beschloss at America, America (05.22.2026):
Donald Trump’s so-called Justice Department filed a motion yesterday to remove the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III along with several other Oath Keepers who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. You can be sure that Rhodes is one of those violent J6 operatives that Trump thinks was wrongfully treated.
“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that the dismissal of this criminal case is in the interest of justice,” the motion stated.
“Justice.”
It’s hard to overstate how disgraceful and dangerous this action is for our country. In the days after J6, Rhodes said, “My only regret is that they didn’t bring rifles.”
Sound like the kind of “patriotic” American Trump wants to “stand by” as part of his personal militia?
It’s important to remember the fierce response of Judge Amit Mehta when he sentenced the remorseless Rhodes to 18 years in prison almost exactly three years ago in 2023. “I dare say, Mr. Rhodes—and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced—you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.
The judge also made clear the gravity of the crime that Rhodes had committed. “A seditious conspiracy—when you take those two concepts and put it together—is among the most serious crimes an American can commit,” he said. “It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country.”
I am sharing below the fuller story behind the judge’s words and his commitment to serving justice. My essay, “Stewart Rhodes’ Crime Against America,” published on Memorial Day May 29, 2023, was surely influenced by my reflection on the hundreds of thousands of Americans who sacrificed their lives to fend off the Nazis and the myriad attacks against freedom and our democratic way of life.
Anti-government extremists like Stewart Rhodes are a vivid expression of the seditious peril that America was facing on J6 and in the days that followed. It’s an appalling fact that this man served less than two years in jail before Trump granted him a pardon last year.
But the despicable effort by Trump’s Justice Department now—to deny Rhodes’ traitorous criminality and free him from the contempt and condemnation that he deserves—is one more reminder that the attack on our nation on Jan. 6, 2021 is a war that has not ended.
Stewart Rhodes’ Crime Against America
You probably saw that the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, the longest sentence thus far for anyone connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. You might have heard that Judge Amit Mehta—born in India, a graduate of Georgetown University and University of Virginia Law School, appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2014—had strong words for the remorseless felon.
“I dare say, Mr. Rhodes—and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced—you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.
But I think on this Memorial Day, a day when we remember Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country to defend the U.S. Constitution and our democratic system of government, it’s worth pausing on some of the detail in Judge Mehta’s remarks. They served to explain his reasoning as well as rebut the arrogant Rhodes’ self-serving rant. “I am a political prisoner,” Rhodes said, adding of his time in prison, “My goal will be to be an ‘American Solzhenitsyn’ to expose the criminality of this regime.”
The Trump Regime’s US Department of Injustice’s ploy to remove the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and other Oath Keepers who took part in the Trump-incited January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.
Several lawmakers told HuffPost they want to make sure no one forgets the most shameful day in U.S. history — and they’re playing the long g
Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:
WASHINGTON — It’s the sound of thousands of fists slamming on doors and windows that lawmakers can still hear when they close their eyes and take themselves back to Jan. 6, 2021.
The terror that coursed through their bodies as rioters — many armed — breached the U.S. Capitol and demanded Donald Trump remain in power is something they can still tap into. The weight of a single question that raged in their minds that day still fresh: Would they get out of the building alive?
“These insurrectionists were calling to kill [then-Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said. “They were threatening to kill all of us. I didn’t know if we were going to get out.”
At one point, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said, he opened a “go bag” containing a gas mask.
“I had never done that before or since,” he said. “You never think a day like that will come.”
Trump has so far evaded responsibility for the events of Jan. 6 — namely, allegations that he conspired to intimidate lawmakers to keep them from certifying the results of the 2020 election. His election victory in 2024 stopped former special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case against him cold.
But Lee v. Trump, a civil case brought by a group of lawmakers, has survived every bid Trump has made to bury it for four years. And soon, the judge presiding over the case will make a critical decision that could be the very last chance the country will ever have to hold Trump to account in a court of law for Jan. 6.
In a series of exclusive interviews with HuffPost, some of the lawmakers suing Trump discussed their yearslong fight for accountability for one of the most shameful days in U.S. history.
Back To The Future
Jayapal was recovering from a knee operation on Jan. 6, which limited her mobility as she scrambled to safety from rioters beating down the doors, smashing through windows and screeching threats.
She spent hours inside a room with fellow legislators, including Republicans who refused to wear masks even though COVID-19 was surging at the time. When she got home that night and poured herself a “stiff drink,” she said she told her husband they were going to get COVID. They both tested positive days later.
“It was very, very stressful and led to some long-term COVID impacts for my husband, too,” she said. “He had a heart attack we were pretty sure was brought on by that because he’s one of the healthiest guys you could ever meet.”
She counts herself lucky not to have been physically attacked. On Jan. 6, over 140 police were assaulted by rioters. Five police who defended the Capitol later died, including some by suicide. Four people in the crowd died on the scene — including rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police while climbing through a shattered glass door and ignoring multiple commands to stand down.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) was on the third floor of the gallery inside the House, squeezed between narrow rows of seats where reporters often sit to watch proceedings, as he heard a “growing crescendo of speech that seemed out of order.”
He understood the severity of the moment when a police officer commanded lawmakers to put on gas masks stowed under seats in the gallery.
“That crystallized for me the danger we were in,” he said.
Some lawmakers were hyperventilating, Johnson said. Another colleague, he remembered, was on the ground having a panic attack.
[...]
It would take hours for the Capitol to be secured, and for lawmakers to be able to return to what they were there to do: certify the 2020 election results. The certification is the last step before a president is inaugurated. It’s a crucial event where members of the House and Senate meet to count the Electoral College results received from the states and hear objections. Objections can only be upheld if both the House and Senate agree.
After the chaos of Jan. 6, the long-standing process underpinning the certification was made less ambiguous with the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022. (The law was originally written in 1877.) Deadlines for states to send electoral certificates were more clearly enumerated with the revised law, for example, and the role the vice president plays in the certification — which was always considered ceremonial — was clarified as a “purely ministerial” role.
Trump’s interpretation of the 1877 Electoral Count Act was particularly tortured. He baselessly claimed that widespread voter fraud had tainted the election and insisted that the certification could be unilaterally stopped by then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people,” Trump said on Jan. 6 from the Ellipse. “And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.’ And then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen.”
Trump’s stolen election lies had gone on for weeks before Jan. 6. It was no secret that Republican allies of Trump in the House and Senate had planned on objecting when the certification came around. Many Republicans broadcast their plans to object on social media and a plan to hold out fake electors as real unfolded in public.
[...]
A Turning Point
In February 2021, the Senate acquitted Trump of inciting an insurrection. The lawsuit was filed the next day.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) first filed the claim. The NAACP and the law firm Cohen Milstein represented the case. Nadler, Jayapal and Johnson joined the lawsuit in April 2021, along with Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.) and then-California Reps. Karen Bass, now the mayor of Los Angeles, and Barbara Lee, now the mayor of Oakland. (Thompson removed himself from the lawsuit after becoming chairman of the Jan. 6 committee. With subpoena powers, he felt it was necessary to avoid “even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” and Lee took over as head plaintiff.)
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by whipping people into a frenzy and, with the assistance of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, intimidated lawmakers to keep them from performing their duties in certifying the 2020 election.
When he rules in the weeks ahead, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will decide whether Trump’s conduct around Jan. 6 was done in his “official capacity” or if he operated mostly as a “private” candidate seeking reelection.
A candidate seeking reelection is acting in his own self-interest, not an official capacity. For the purposes of the suit, Trump wants to be seen as an official actor.
His calls to supporters to reject the certification, his demands that Pence send the certified results “back to the states,” and his failure to immediately summon help to the Capitol — and instead blast out campaign-focused messages on social media — are prime examples of “private” and “campaign seeking” behavior, according to the lawmakers’ lawsuit.
Mehta already ruled in 2022 that some remarks Trump made during his speech from the Ellipse, like telling supporters to “fight like hell,” were not done in an “official” capacity. Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which agreed that Trump’s conduct was likely that of an office-seeker, not an officeholder.
It was huge when Mehta refused to dismiss the lawmakers’ civil case, said Joseph Sellers, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
[...]
If Mehta finds Trump acted as an office-seeker, the president is likely to make a beeline for the appellate court — or go to the Supreme Court — and demand the case be thrown out or the ruling reversed.
[...]
Nowhere Left To Hide
Trump called Jan. 6 a “hoax” only weeks ago. He continues to falsely claim, against intelligence community assessments and independent inspector general findings, that FBI agents were responsible for agitating the mob on Jan. 6. In the lawsuit, Trump has defended his conduct on Jan. 6 as necessary and normal for a president concerned with goings-on across government.
One of Trump’s first moves when he reentered the White House was to pardon over 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including those who violently assaulted police. He issued pardons and commutations for members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of organizing a seditious conspiracy to stop the transfer of power.
The impending Lee v. Trump case could be the last chance for any means of holding insurrection-inciter Donald Trump accountable for what happened on January 6th, 2021.
Ruling states ‘Google is a monopolist’ in decision that could have major implications for how people use the internet
Nick Robins-Early at The Guardian:
Google violated antitrust laws as it built an internet search empire, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a decision that could have major implications for the way people interact with the internet.
Judge Amit Mehta found that Google violated section 2 of the Sherman Act, a US antitrust law. His decision states that Google maintained a monopoly over search services and advertising.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” the ruling states.
The ruling is one of the largest antitrust decisions in decades, capping off a case that pitted the justice department against one of the world’s most valuable companies. It was also part of a broader push in recent years from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, as well as European regulators, to scrutinize big tech companies for allegedly monopolistic practices.
There was no jury in the trial, which began in September of last year before taking a long hiatus for Mehta to consider a ruling. Closing arguments wrapped up in the first week of May, with Mehta concluding the trial by stating that he was aware of the gravity of the case for both Google and the public.
In the United States v. Google case, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act to maintain a search monopoly.
Un giudice federale USA respinge la richiesta di vendere Chrome: Google evita la cessione ma non potrà più firmare contratti esclusivi e dovrà condividere i dati. Scopri di più su Alessandria today.
E-cig company Juul has had a black cloud above its head thanks to federal regulators’ efforts to squash the brand, but recent court and agency decisions might mean executive efforts to hamper vape companies could potentially go up in smoke.
Read more…
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Friday ruled lawsuits against Donald Trump can move forward because the former president’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 “plausibly” could have led to the violent and deadly insurrection.
Trump’s speech likely constituted “words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment,” Judge Mehta added, and could have directed attendees to break the law, the Associated Press reports.
“Fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump told attendees at the Jan. 6 “rally.” He previously had promoted it, saying it would be “wild.”
He said, “(We’re) going to try to and give (weak Republicans) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” and then told the crowd to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Judge Amit Mehta allows Rep. Eric Swalwell (D)'s lawsuit against former "President" Donald Trump to proceed on the basis that his January 6th, 2021 speech plausibly inflamed the Capitol Insurrection. Mehta ruled against allowing lawsuits aimed at Trump Jr. and Giuliani.
