Joe Biden Just Did Something Huge About Ticketmaster Ruining Our Lives

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a massive antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, accusing them of holding an illegal monopoly on live event tickets and driving up prices.

The suit comes after Ticketmaster crashed and prevented people from purchasing tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—inadvertently exposing the ticketing giant’s monopoly on the shows—and argues that Ticketmaster acted like a Mafia don for venues and artists alike by requiring lengthy exclusive contracts, threatening lost revenue if they use other ticket sellers, and preventing artists who don’t use Live Nation services from performing at venues with Live Nation contracts.

Attorneys general from 30 states filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, overseen by U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland, who released a statement announcing the lawsuit:

We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators. The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, refuted the suit’s premise, arguing Live Nation’s revenue has declined due to competition and that the suit will have no impact on ticket prices. He included a graph to belay his point, showing the ticket retailer’s revenue significantly lower than that of tech giants Apple, Meta, and Google.

“It was evident in our discussions with the DOJ Front Office that they just did not want to believe the numbers. The data conflicted too much with their preconception that Live Nation belongs in the ranks of the other “tech monopolists” they have targeted,” Wall wrote. “It is also clear that we are another casualty of this Administration’s decision to turn over antitrust enforcement to a populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works.”

The Justice Department allowed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010 despite bipartisan opposition to it—so long as they didn’t retaliate against venues for using other vendors for 10 years. A 2019 department investigation found Live Nation repeatedly violated that agreement.

Trump stooge and Republican Representative Andy Ogles has been caught in a major ethics scandal of his own making.

According to 11 amendments that he filed to his campaign finance reports on Wednesday, Ogles didn’t actually loan his campaign $320,000, as he previously claimed. That begs the question: Where did the money come from?

In November, the Tennessee congressman was found to have some irregularities in his campaign reports, thanks to an investigation by a Nashville TV station, NewsChannel 5. Among them was a $320,000 loan to his campaign from himself, even though his personal finance reports didn’t show a place where such a loan could have originated—not even a personal bank account.

In his amendments, Ogles says that his campaign loan was actually $20,000 instead of $320,000, a sizable oversight, and raises the question of what explains the inconsistencies. Former Representative George Santos is currently facing criminal charges for inflating campaign fundraising numbers—after also reporting he loaned himself a sizable amount of money. Santos was later found to have spent campaign dollars on casino trips, Botox treatments, and OnlyFans payments. Is Ogles hiding something like Santos?

It’s not an outlandish question, as the two have one glaring similarity: making up parts of their past. Ogles claimed to have studied policy and economics at Middle Tennessee State University and calls himself an economist, but only has one community college economics course under his belt, which he barely passed. He later claimed on a 2009 résumé to have a degree in international relations, but NewsChannel 5 found that his major was actually liberal studies—a hilarious degree for a Republican politician.

Although Ogles’s lies aren’t nearly as outrageous as Santos’s whoppers, he also has another possible financial crime on his résumé: $25,000 raised supposedly to build a garden in memory of his stillborn child. Except that the garden was never built, and Ogles refuses to say what happened with the money. With a history of lies piling up in his short congressional career, perhaps a criminal investigation of Ogles is necessary.

House Democrats are coming out against a plan to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress, with some of the party’s top brass joining the choir.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to sign on to a formal invitation to the Israeli leader, with the two leaders currently negotiating over an invitation. That has been complicated by a half-dozen Democratic lawmakers openly condemning the oddly timed speech, calling it a “political gesture.”

Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips told Axios that Netanyahu is “dividing this country … in a similar way he’s divided Israel, and I think that’s awfully dangerous.”

“I can only imagine the personal and political conflict facing Leader Schumer,” Phillips added.

Those who have spoken out against the invitation include Phillips, as well as Representatives Dan Kildee and Scott Peters. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had previously called on Netanyahu to resign, simply said “no” to the prospect of Schumer extending a personal invitation to the Israeli leader.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes felt that Netanyahu’s attention would be better used elsewhere, telling Axios that Bibi “should be focused on freeing hostages, not on charming legislators.”

The open call to bring Netanyahu to the U.S. Capitol comes mere days after the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him, charging the Israeli prime minister and three Hamas leaders with “crimes against humanity” committed in Gaza. Those charges have stood out for several lawmakers, even though the United States is not a member of the ICC.

“I think it’s a strange time to invite Netanyahu; it’s a really divisive kind of move,” Peters told Axios.

Kildee also alluded to the charges, telling the publication that he didn’t believe it was a “good time” to bring Netanyahu.

“Let’s not complicate an already complicated situation,” Kildee said.

Insurrectionist flag addict Samuel Alito and five other conservative justices delivered a long-awaited Supreme Court opinion about racial gerrymandering on Thursday, determining that a racially gerrymandered redistricting map in South Carolina is actually not about race at all.

The Supreme Court has typically rejected districts drawn with race as a predominant factor—but according to the majority’s decision, written by Alito, that’s not the case with the South Carolina district the ACLU previously depicted as a two-headed dragon that cut across multiple neighborhoods using 2020 census data to minimize the impact of the Black vote.

A federal court agreed with the ACLU in January 2023, ordering South Carolina to redraw its 2021 enacted congressional map. South Carolina appealed the decision, kicking it up to the conservative-controlled Supreme Court.

The 2023 federal decision unanimously agreed that state legislators “may not use partisanship as a proxy for race.” The decision handed down by the Supreme Court Wednesday nuked that opinion by essentially deciding everything is partisan, thereby negating the issue of race entirely: “Where race and politics are highly correlated, a map that has been gerrymandered to achieve a partisan end can look very similar to a racially gerrymandered map,” the absurd decision reads.

The decision further claims that because the ACLU didn’t provide a hypothetical “rational” map to show what non–racially gerrymandered redistricting would look like, it failed to prove that the racist gerrymandering was not done in “good faith”—a new precedent for racial gerrymandering cases that the Supreme Court has never required before.

All liberal justices dissented, with Kagan apparently sneaking a reference to an inverted flag flown outside Alito’s home in January 2021 into her dissent.

Nikki Haley once warned that Trump becoming the Republican presidential nominee would be “suicide for our country” and that “everything Trump touches turns to chaos.” But on Wednesday, she forgot all of her own dire warnings and stated she plans to vote for him in November. Unfortunately for her, the internet never forgets.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank she chairs, Haley said, “Trump has not been perfect on these policies, but Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.”

“As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border, who would support capitalism and freedom, who understands we need less debt not more debt,” Haley said, while stopping short of a full-throated endorsement.

“That’s not Donald Trump. That’s not his record in office,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton shot back at Haley’s explanation during an appearance on CNN.

The internet did what the internet does and resurfaced clips of criticisms Haley previously made against Trump in response to her announcement.

Many decried her heel turn as an act of cowardice, adding hers to the ranks of similar pivots from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. While some speculated Haley’s vote was an effort to nab a vice presidential spot, Trump reportedly released an email Wednesday night announcing, “Nikki Haley not under VP consideration! But, I wish her well …”

“There goes her reputation, permanently,” one user posted in response to news of Haley’s vote.

“Nikki Haley’s transformation is almost complete. The only thing left to do is shoot a puppy,” another mused.

Haley’s choice to kiss the ring angered her supporters, many of whom rallied behind her in protest against Trump’s extreme agenda.

“Stop with the bullsh!t,” wrote former RNC chairman Michael Steele. “You could have said this on the day you suspended your campaign. Continue to support you?! The people who voted for you will not be voting for Trump. That was the point. I wish I could say I am disappointed. I am not even surprised.”

The Biden campaign renewed its invitation to Haley voters to join their campaign, which Biden first issued in March after Haley announced the end of her presidential campaign.

“Nikki Haley voters, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote. I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign,” Biden wrote at the time.