Pluralistic : Trump antitrust is dead (13 Feb 2026) – Pluralistic : Daily links from Cory Doctorow
▻https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit
The best framing for the MAGA war on Big Tech comes from Trashfuture’s Riley Quinn, who predicted that the whole thing could be settled by tech companies’ boards agreeing to open every meeting with a solemn “stolen likes acknowledgment” that made repentance for all the shadowbanned culture warriors whose clout had been poached by soy content moderators.
And that’s basically what happened. Trump’s antitrust agencies practiced “boss politics antitrust” in which favored courtiers were given free passes to violate the law, while Trump’s enemies were threatened with punitive antitrust investigations until they fell into line:
▻https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/29/bondi-and-domination/#superjove
Trump’s antitrust boss Gail Slater talked a big game about “Trump Antitrust” but was thwarted at every turn by giant corporations who figured out that if they gave a million bucks to a MAGA podcaster, they could go over Slater’s head and kill her enforcement actions. When Slater’s deputy, Roger Alford, went public to denounce the sleazy backroom dealings that led to the approval of the HPE/Juniper merger, he was forced out of the agency altogether and replaced with a Pam Bondi loyalist who served as a kind of politburo political officer in Slater’s agency:
▻https://abovethelaw.com/2025/08/former-maga-attorney-goes-scorched-earth-with-corruption-allegations-in
Bondi made no secret of her contempt for Slater, and frequently humiliated her in public. Now it seems that Bondi has gotten tired of this game and has forced Slater out altogether.
