How does what the FTC is, is going after here differ from what these eight states are going after? It sounds like they're going after the exact same thing.

thing.Well, so, uh, look, the, the attorneys general of Nebraska and Kansas are friends of mine.

They are phenomenal protectors of the people of their state.

I don't know exactly what they're looking for, but we work with state partners all the time because the states enforce laws that are similar to what the FTC enforces.

But one of the things the FTC enforces sort of uniquely is that one of our jobs is to make sure that companies have, um, good data security systems and that they're complying with their data security systems and that they aren't misleading consumers about whether their products are safe and protect data.

And that's one of the things that we wanna know, just like we would wanna know any time that there's a hack or a breach, we wanna make sure that the companies are building products that are safe and that consumers can use and that they've been accurately represented to consumers, and that's our job.

We just want consumers to be safe in the SI marketplace no differently than they are in every other marketplace, and that's part of the president's pro-America SI agenda.

When it comes to this race at an early stage, being out in front really does matter.

Please join me in welcoming the Honorable Andrew Ferguson here to the Hudson Institute to speak about the recent announcements on health care policy.

Good afternoon, I'm very happy to be here.

Let me begin with a short passage from the book of Sirach.

Written some 200 years before the birth of Christ, the book of Sirach was intended to transmit the wisdom of its revered author to his readers.

And in chapter 30, he offers the reader the following bits of wisdom concerning health.

Better the poor in vigorous health than the rich with bodily ills.

I would rather have bodily health than all gold and contentment of spirit than all pearls.

So when the companies or the hospital providers come out saying, hey, this is a failing firm case, How do you see through that and differentiate a legitimate case from an illegitimate one? What do you look for?

So how has that experience shaped the way that you have approached this chairman role, particularly when it comes to coordinating with state attorneys general when it comes to enforcement matters?

It's affected it in a number of ways.

Number one, I learned from being solicitor general about the importance of consumer protection law.

Most big law practices have, if they have consumer protection practice, it's a part of their competition practice.

And when I was coming up, it was like the redheaded stepchild of antitrust.

It was often limited to some FTC work, some false claims work, although a lot of the false claims work is handled by the Medicare or Medicaid practice law firm.

And then some state AG work, but it was considered sort of the like less rigorous version of antitrust.

So what does it mean when you pick up the phone, literally or figuratively, to work with AGs? What does that mean as a practical matter?

First, what does presidentially controlled antitrust mean in practice? Does it mean the president can decide whether to bring a case or to fare a murder lawful? And second, if the executive is unitary, what's left to distinguish the FTC from the DOJ? Why have an FTC at all?

Good questions.

Let me take them one by one.

I want to resist the premise slightly that the FTC was designed to be, quote, independent, end quote.

The only feature of the FTC Act that promotes anything that we would call independence is that the statute purports to limit removal of...

the officers of the commission to certain situations, but there's nothing in a statute that says that the president can't direct their functions.

And to the contrary, there are other parts of the statute that especially require the FTC to submit to presidential control, like on budget questions, which is hugely important that the white house decides what the budget requests from the FTC will be by statute tradition first in the statute.

Why are you so critical of regulation even when it seems to deliver outcomes, but you fade up arguably faster and you worry that case-by-case enforcement is too slow to keep pace with digital markets?

What is your main complaint? What are you alleging

that Amazon did? So the FTC in 22 states, and then another state, Texas, filed their own lawsuit alongside ours, alleged that Amazon runs an auction for advertising on Amazon's website.

That's how all advertising is done online, are instantaneous auctions.

And that Amazon was representing to customers that it was running a particular type of auction that would result in people paying particular types of prices.

What we found after an extensive multi-year investigation is that that wasn't true, is that they were setting surcharge fees that they weren't telling any of the advertisers about that were higher than the fees that the advertisers thought they would actually pay based on what Amazon had been telling them.

And that as a result, Amazon from 2018 to 2025 got tens of billions of dollars in surcharge additional profit taken from the advertisers that the advertisers did not understand was happening.

So how do you counter their claim that this was a voluntary program that appeared to have some level of customer satisfaction?

Yeah, I think as with most fraud cases, of which this is a variety, the people who are suffering from the fraud often have no idea that it's happening.

Great to see you.

Thank you, Mr.

Vice President, and welcome to all my friends from the Senate and from the House.

We're very pleased that you're here.

I want to thank President Trump for creating this task force and assembling us here today.

He is the first president in American history to take this fraud issue, which is an existential crisis for the American Republic, seriously.

And none of this would have been possible without him.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Vice President, and welcome to all the state attorneys general.

I'm very grateful you traveled all this way.

to discuss one of the most pressing problems this nation confronts.

When I was Solicitor General of Virginia, I served alongside many of you and fought against the Biden administration to protect our border, our religious liberty, and our right to keep and bear arms.

And today we're here to talk about another problem that we need to partner with you to fight that the Obama administration and Biden administration made much worse, which is widespread fraud against our benefits programs.

Thanks, Judge Richardson.

I am going to talk briefly about the Kavanaugh confirmation, which is the time when I was not working for Senator Graham.

Then Senator Graham was working for Chairman Grassley.

And I am going to talk about his speech, both because it is, in my view, the single most memorable event of...

the most difficult confirmation in American history, with the exception of maybe my old bosses, Justice Thomas's.

But also because it is a helpful microcosm for understanding Senator Graham's approach to judicial confirmations and to politics generally.

And it is consistent with what Kat just discussed about the way Chairman Graham does business, which is an endless sort of Manichaean dichotomy between good guys and bad guys.

Can we close with you telling us what piece of advice you think Senator Graham would want us to know about the judicial confirmation process now as we move forward? Andrew, why don't we start with you?

Spike the football, sir.

Well, I think generally if the president asks you to help your country, you stand, salute, and do your job, and when he asked me to take this on, um, you know, I, I said yes.

And I think this is one of the most important initiatives that President Trump has put forth in either of his terms because this fraud is bleeding the country dry.

And this isn't just a, like, financial issue.

W- Our society, the society we inherited as part of Western civilization, is premised on neighbors being able to trust each other on basic issues, that we don't have to constantly check everything that everybody is doing, that there has to be some level of mutual trust.

The West, Western civilization requires high-trust societies.

If elements of society are bleeding the rest of us dry, we will lose trust in each other, we will lose faith in our government, and we will lose faith in the American experiment.

Uh, explain how the whole of government approach is being utilized and why that's so critical to success here.

Spike the football, sir.

Well, I think generally if the president asks you to help your country, you stand, salute, and do your job.

And when he asked me to take this on, um, you know, I, I said yes.

And I think this is one of the most important initiatives that President Trump has put forth in either of his terms because this fraud is bleeding the country dry.

And this isn't just a, like, financial issue.

W- Our society, the society we inherited as part of Western civilization, is premised on neighbors being able to trust each other on basic issues, that we don't have to constantly check everything that everybody is doing, that there has to be some level of mutual trust.

The West, Western civilization requires high-trust societies.

Uh, explain how the whole of government approach is being utilized and why that's so critical to success here.

I think it's good.

The Hawaii Medicaid program has received billions and billions of dollars from the federal taxpayers.

And of course, Hawaii taxpayers have paid in a lot of money into this program over the last years as well.

Guess how many convictions or indictments has Hawaii had over the last few years in its Medicaid fraud program? The answer is zero.

New York has had nine indictments over the last year.

Nine indictments.

That's a $100 billion Medicaid program just in New York.

Explain how the whole of government approach is being utilized and why that's so critical to success here.

Is there a factor that, that matters more to you? You know, the, the number of employees hired, or putting a value on the intellectual capital, or the competitive advantage that, that such a transaction would give the acquirer?

So the value that matters for HSR [clears throat] is set by the statute.

That's not really here or there, but the HSR act applies to, um, deals where assets or stock are being purchased, and that's what triggers HSR review.

And so what we need to understand, um, which is why we're beginning to examine this question now, is when does an acquihire, you know, involve the sale of st- the acquisition of assets or stock in a way that would trigger the statute? Look, at the end of the day, I'm a lawyer and a law enforcer, and I enforce statutes, and those statutes have texts.

And so it's my job to understand whether things happening in the marketplace trigger the text that Congress has actually passed for us, but that's what we're looking at.

We're not trying to set sort of ...

We wouldn't be setting, like, acquihire rules generally.

Uh, what is the FTC able to do on pricing pressure, bringing prices down, addressing that consumer concern?

Is there a factor that matters more to you, the number of employees hired or putting a value on the intellectual capital or the competitive advantage that such a transaction would give the acquirer?

So the value that matters for HSR is set by the statute.

That's not really here or there.

But the HSR Act applies to deals where assets or stock are being purchased.

And that's what triggers HSR review.

And so what we need to understand, which is why we're beginning to examine this question now, is when does an acqui-hire involve the acquisition of assets or stock in a way that would trigger the statute? Look, at the end of the day, I'm a lawyer and a law enforcer, and I enforce statutes, and those statutes have texts.

And so it's my job to understand whether things happening in the marketplace trigger the text that Congress has actually passed for us.

What is the FTC able to do on pricing pressure, bringing prices down, addressing that consumer concern?

What is the basis for the suit?

So, look, ticketing in this country has gotten out of control, and credit for this goes to President Trump.

He's understood this for a long time.

Americans are sick of having to fork over an arm and a leg to take their family to a baseball game or to see their favorite show, their favorite musician, whatever it is.

And he issued an EO in March that told the federal government and the FTC in particular, do something about this.

Use your legal authorities to try to help Americans be able to do this thing that we love, that's a huge part of our culture, which is going to live sporting events and live shows.

So we filed this suit today against Ticketmaster and we've got three things that we're saying have been going on.

I realize that's the jurisdiction of the FCC, but when we talk about media M&A, in particular, for example, the Tegna Nexstar deal, which seems to be in focus in the midst of this controversy of the last couple of days, how are you thinking about this, and does it funnel into your regulatory process for deals such as that?

Um, but I wanted to bring on, uh, Chairman Ferguson just to sort of react to what the State Department is doing and how it sort of bolsters what you guys have been doing really since day one, and frankly even before, um, over at the FTC in terms of combating censorship.

Thanks for having me on.

Um, to start off with, I think Secretary Rubio, on this front, is just doing a fabulous job.

I mean, you know, b- be- being a guest in the United States is a privilege.

And the idea that that privilege should be extended to people who hate this country, who wanna scream about their hatred in the public square, they wanna burn the flag, is just absurd.

So I, you know, I- I- I think, um, Secretary Rubio's approach to this and President Trump's approach to this is, A, long overdue and it's such a breath of fresh air to make sure that if you are not an American but you wanna spend time in this country, at the very least, you can't openly despise and hate this country and foment violence against it.

So, kudos to Secretary Rubio.

Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.

How would you answer that?

I am different.

Look, I want vigorous antitrust enforcement.

Competition is what makes America great.

It's how we innovate.

It's how we grow.

Monopoly is not good for innovation.

So,

Right

... economic power, or you can imagine businesses that aren't true monopolists, but they have tons of economic power, or, uh, political power, I'm sorry.

And so courts up through the 1950s and '60s were just sort of casting about, looking for some standard they could articulate about when the antitrust laws are violated.

And by the '50s or '60s, it was very difficult for anyone to predict what any given court was gonna say about any given transaction or conduct.

You had as, you know, y- you could've premised it on what the judges were having for breakfast when they were deciding the cases, and that was as likely a predictor of outcomes as anything else.

Then this guy who y- you know, a lot of people in this audience, if, you know, it's as sort of wonky as you guys [laughs] say it is, have probably heard of for other reasons.

He was a professor at Yale.

But yeah, go ahead.

And I wonder if you could explain what the difference is between what Wall Street expected and what you're doing.

Sure.

This is a free market administration, but one of the most important ways we keep our markets free in this country is vigorously enforcing the antitrust laws.

If we've got markets infected with monopolies, with collusion, with foreclosure, the markets aren't free.

They don't work for ordinary Americans.

President Trump won this election because ordinary Americans were fed up with the way that the country was working.

I see it as my job at the FTC to vigorously enforce the antitrust laws to protect ordinary Americans.

I'm wondering just how many of the enforcement actions from the Lena Kahn era FTC you guys are going to drop or move away from.