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President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Gail Slater, an antitrust veteran and economic adviser for JD Vance, to lead the Department of Justice’s antitrust division and take charge of a full docket of blockbuster monopoly cases against companies including Google, Visa and Apple.

Slater is expected to continue the department’s crackdown on Big Tech, including cases brought during Trump’s first term in the White House, Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform.

“Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump said.

Slater served on the White House’s National Economic Council in 2018, where she worked on Trump’s executive order on national security concerns over Chinese telecommunications equipment.

Before joining Vance’s office, Slater worked at Fox Corp. and Roku.

Vance, the vice president-elect, has said antitrust officials should take a broader approach to antitrust enforcement, and praised the work of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.

Slater grew up in Dublin, Ireland, and began her law career in London at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which brought her to Washington.

She spent 10 years at the FTC, first as an antitrust attorney where she brought cases to block mergers including Whole Foods’ acquisition of organic grocer Wild Oats, and later as an adviser to then-commissioner Julie Brill, who later became an executive at Microsoft.

Slater also represented Big Tech companies including Amazon and Google at a now-defunct trade group called the Internet Association.

She is still viewed as an antitrust hawk among Washington tech skeptics, who welcomed her appointment.

Garrett Ventry, a former adviser to Republicans in Congress and founder of GRV Strategies, said Slater’s nomination shows Trump is “serious about taking on Big Tech.”

“Antitrust enforcement is here to stay,” Ventry said.

The Tech Oversight project, a group that backed the work of Biden’s DOJ antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, said the nomination shows antitrust has staying power as a bipartisan political issue.

“Gail Slater is a strong candidate to continue that work,” said Sacha Haworth, the group’s executive director.

Slater will take over a number of high-profile cases in which some of the world’s largest companies are accused of illegally building and protecting monopolies.

Trump said Slater will “ensure that our competition laws are enforced, both vigorously and FAIRLY, with clear rules that facilitate, rather than stifle, the ingenuity of our greatest companies.”

The appointment would put Slater in charge of the DOJ’s bid to make Google sell off its Chrome browser and take other measures to curb its dominance in online search.

The DOJ filed the case in 2020, during the first Trump administration. But the proposals for fixes came under Kanter.

The judge overseeing the case has said Trump officials will not get extra time to reevaluate the proposals ahead of an April trial.

Google faces a second battle with the DOJ over its online advertising technology, while Apple faces allegations that it monopolized the US smartphone market.

Kanter also filed the DOJ’s first case alleging algorithmic price fixing against property management software company RealPage.

In another case, the DOJ is seeking to break up LiveNation and TicketMaster over practices that prosecutors say harm eventgoers and artists.

Slater would have wide latitude over the cases, though most are also being pursued by bipartisan state coalitions.

A case the DOJ brought in September alleging Visa unlawfully dominates the market for debit card payment processing does not involve state antitrust regulators.

Slater would also be in a position to continue or end probes, such as an investigation into Nvidia, the chip company that rode the artificial intelligence boom to become one of the world’s most valuable companies.

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New Hampshire governor signs crypto reserve bill into law

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New Hampshire governor signs crypto reserve bill into law

New Hampshire governor signs crypto reserve bill into law

New Hampshire became the first US state to allow its government to invest in crypto currencies including Bitcoin (BTC), after Governor Kelly Ayotte signed a bill passed by the legislature into law.

In a May 6 notice, Ayotte announced on social media that New Hampshire would be permitted to “invest in cryptocurrency and precious metals” through a bill passed in the state Senate and House of Representatives. House Bill 302, introduced in New Hampshire in January, will allow the state’s treasury to use funds to invest in cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, eliminating many tokens and memecoins.

“The Live Free or Die state is leading the way in forging the future of commerce and digital assets,” said New Hampshire Republicans in a May 6 X post.

Law, New Hampshire, United States, Bitcoin Reserve
Signing New Hampshire’s crypto reserve bill into law on May 6. Source: Governor Kelly Ayotte

With the signing of the bill into law, New Hampshire becomes the first of several US states considering passing legislation to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, including an initiative with the federal government. A similar bill in Arizona passed the state’s House in April but was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs on May 2, and Florida’s government withdrew two crypto reserve bills from consideration on May 3.

Related: Bitcoin’s role as a reserve asset gains traction in US as states adopt

New Hampshire’s crypto plans to precede the US government’s?

The efforts to create crypto reserves in different US states come as US President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers propose similar policies at the federal level. Trump signed an executive order in March to establish a “Digital Asset Stockpile” and a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.”

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who sponsored the Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide (BITCOIN) Act, proposed that the US government could hold more than 1 million BTC through civil and criminal forfeiture seizures. The bill is currently being considered by members of the US Senate Banking Committee.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

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Pakistan ‘attacked with missiles’ – as India says it targeted terrorist camps

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Pakistan 'attacked with missiles' - as India says it targeted terrorist camps

Pakistan says it has been targeted in a missile attack by India.

Three missiles were fired by India across the border into Pakistani-controlled territory, said Pakistani security officials.

They hit locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in the country’s eastern Punjab province, according to officials.

The Indian defence ministry said it had launched Operation Sindoor as it struck “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir “from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed”.

It said a total of nine sites were targeted.

A Pakistan military spokesman said the country will respond to the attacks.

Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been escalating following a militant gun attack in the disputed area of Kashmir last month.

At least 26 people, most of whom were Indian tourists, were shot dead by gunmen at a beauty spot near the resort town of Pahalgam in the Indian-controlled part of the region on 22 April.

India described the massacre as a “terror attack” and said it had “cross border” links, blaming Pakistan for backing it.

Pakistan denied any connection to the atrocity, which was claimed by a previously unknown militant group called the Kashmir Resistance.

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24 April: Pakistani minister warns ‘all-out war’ possible

Since the attack, Pakistan’s military has been on high alert after a cabinet minister said Islamabad had credible intelligence indicating that India could attack.

And Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif told Sky News’ The World With Yalda Hakim that the world should be “worried” about the prospect of a full-scale conflict involving the two nations.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

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Friedrich Merz becomes Germany’s new chancellor after surviving historic vote failure

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Friedrich Merz becomes Germany's new chancellor after surviving historic vote failure

Friedrich Merz has become Germany’s new chancellor after winning a second vote in the country’s parliament.

He unexpectedly failed in the first parliamentary ballot on Tuesday morning – the first time a chancellor has failed to be elected at the first attempt since the Second World War.

Initially, needing a majority of 316 out of 630 votes in a secret ballot, he received 310 – falling short by just six votes. On the second ballot he managed 325.

It means Mr Merz, the leader of the country’s CDU/CSU conservatives, has become the 10th chancellor since the end of the Second World War.

Friedrich Merz during his swearing in ceremony. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Friedrich Merz during his swearing in ceremony. Pic: Reuters

He had been expected to win comfortably after securing a coalition deal with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

It meant at least 18 coalition MPs failed to back him in the first round of voting.

Announcing the second vote, Jens Spahn, the head of the Union bloc in parliament, said: “The whole of Europe, perhaps even the whole world, is watching this second round of elections.”

More on Germany

Earlier, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, said on X that Mr Merz’s failure to secure a majority in the first round showed the “weak foundation” on which his coalition was built, adding that it had been “voted out by the voters”.

Mr Merz, 69, succeeds Olaf Scholz and has vowed to prioritise European unity and the continent’s security.

Germany's incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz shakes hands with outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Pic Reuters
Image:
Mr Merz (R) shakes hands with outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz (L). Pic: Reuters

His in-tray includes the Ukraine war and global tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent congratulations to Mr Merz and wished him “every success”.

The Ukrainian president added that the future of Europe was “at stake” and security will “depend on our unity”.

Mr Merz will also have to decide what to do about the AfD, which mainstream parties have refused to work with.

A “firewall” against collaborating with strongly right-wing parties has been in place since the end of the war.

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During federal elections in late February, the AfD scored its best-ever result while Olaf Scholz’s SPD dropped to about 16%.

The AfD is the second largest party in the lower house of the Bundestag and was officially designated as extremist last week by Germany’s domestic spy agency.

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