Colorado becomes second state to require pre-merger notifications
Washington became the first earlier this year, and at least five other states — including California — and the District of Columbia are considering similar rules.
Why it matters: States often lack visibility into pending mergers. These new laws aim to change that dynamic, which could increase antitrust enforcement actions.
Zoom in: The Colorado and Washington rules are aimed at companies or individuals who are required by federal law to make Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) filings, if those parties do a certain level of business in the respective states.
In short, those HSR filings now must be sent contemporaneously to the state AGs. No extra paperwork, just extra envelopes.
The big picture: States always have had the right to enforce their own antitrust laws.
Sometimes that's been efforted because federal authorities declined to act, such as with T-Mobile/Sprint (which eventually went through). Sometimes it's because states believe a merger presents unique harms to their people, beyond FTC or DOJ suits, such as with Kroger-Albertsons (which collapsed).
Often, however, state AGs have found themselves playing catch-up, and it's particularly tough to win antitrust cases once the merger has closed.
Behind the scenes: A longtime antitrust attorney tells me that state antitrust officials hold remote meetings at least twice per month, via the National Association of Attorneys General, and sometimes break out into sector-specific groups.
These new notification rules appear to allow Colorado and Washington staffers to share the HSR filings with peers, so other states could get added visibility without passing laws of their own.
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CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
The White House is trying to change the conversation about Trump's BLS scandal
President Donald Trump claims, without a shred of evidence, that the government's premiere economic data operation nefariously engineered negative statistics 'for political purposes.' His top economic advisers don't share that view, even as they continue to defend his stunning – and largely impulsive – decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a poor jobs report last week. Trump says 'rigged.' His advisers say 'reform.' The rhetorical sleight of hand, difficult as it may be to catch as Trump's economic team takes pains to defend a fixation untethered to reality, captures an important window into the internal West Wing discussions about the next nominee to serve as commissioner of the BLS. Trump's economic advisers are fully aware of the widely acknowledged necessity of insulating – or at least attempting to shield – the next BLS chief from the perception of political interference, according to people familiar with the internal debate. 'The efficacy and the believability of our economic projections are very important,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on MSNBC this week as he argued for a more efficient and accurate data collection process. 'I think the replacement is going to be a highly competent statistician or labor economist and it will be someone, you know, who won't have errors of this magnitude.' One week after the BLS commissioner was ousted, Trump and his economic advisers have tried to clean up the damage by making the narrative about the need to modernize the agency to make the data more reliable and accurate. But that's easier said than done, and the administration is working to find someone reputable who won't freak out markets. 'It is imperative that Trump's nominee be perceived by businesses and investors as nonpartisan and independent of the White House,' Michael R. Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote this week. 'Because trust in the integrity of government data is a foundation of prosperity, it is in Trump's direct political interest to appoint an independent BLS chief.' Trump, at least publicly, isn't exactly making that process any easier and his political allies have pressed the White House to appoint an unabashed loyalist, people familiar with the matter told CNN. But Trump's economic advisers understand the bureaucratic constraints any nominee would face if confirmed for the role by the US Senate. The commissioner, after all, isn't responsible for collecting the data. That exceedingly arduous and labor-intensive process is conducted by hundreds of federal employees who Republicans and Democrats familiar with the process alike say pursue their mandate with an apolitical and dedicated approach. As the data comes into the agency, only about 40 career officials have access to the raw findings and are tasked with creating the final presentation for public release. The commissioner doesn't even see the data until it's largely locked in and complete – less than 48 hours before it publishes, according to Bill Beach, the conservative Republican Trump appointed to run the agency in his first term. 'Zero is the upper bound of that response,' Beach said when asked by CNN how much influence a commissioner has over the final numbers. 'There was no way for me to change the data. I could have said, oh, you people need to do a better job, the numbers are too low or too high and it would have made zero difference to that staff. In fact, they would have talked to me less.' That doesn't mean there has been a long-standing discussion about significant improvements that could be applied to the current process. The business response rate to the initial survey that comprises the jobs numbers has dropped dramatically in recent years. Technological upgrades have been weighed for years and are widely acknowledged as a necessity for an agency that has faced budget cuts and significant senior staff departures in recent years. 'There's always room for improvement,' Beach said. 'We need to have a better way of collecting these numbers in a more cost-effective way. That's what I hope the president does.' To this point, that hasn't happened. The administration has proposed an 8% cut to the agency's budget for the next fiscal year and has proposed cutting 150 positions. Lawmakers are set to dive into a fractious government funding debate when they return from their August recess and several senior Democratic aides say House and Senate appropriators plan to utilize Trump's decision to elevate the agency's work will turn it into an important part of the debate ahead. 'I wouldn't say try to do better with the same money,' Cathy Utgoff, who served as the agency's commissioner under President George W. Bush, told CNN. 'I would say you really need to have more money here, because you have to collect more data to make it more reliable.' For the moment, however, Trump's advisers are continuing the tenuous balancing act of highlighting the significant revisions without imposing long-term damage on a strained data operation often referred to as the 'gold standard' by economic policymakers around the world. 'What we need is a fresh set of eyes over the BLS,' National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said August 3 on NBC's Meet the Press. Hassett, in subsequent interview on Fox News Sunday, said that if he ran the BLS and had 'the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened.' Reform and transparency have been the throughline of the evolving defense provided by Trump's allies – even if Trump has shown no interest in the more nuanced rationale for his unprecedented move. The awkward dynamic was on full display in the Oval Office on Thursday, as Trump hastily summoned the White House press corps to display a simplistic chart displaying annual employment revisions under his predecessor. The data was delivered to Trump by Stephen Moore, the conservative economist who has served as an outside adviser to Trump at various points during his first and second administration. As Moore detailed the data making up the posterboard displayed for reporters, he was careful not to ascribe political motives – only to be interrupted by Trump after calling it a 'gigantic error.' 'I don't think it's an error,' Trump said as he cut in. 'I think they did it purposefully.' Moore recalibrated on the fly – carefully and with visible discomfort. 'You may well be right, but even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetence,' the senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation said in a hedged effort to avoid contradicting Trump's assertion. Trump has said he will announce his pick to lead the agency as soon as Friday. The nominee will face an intense confirmation process, which lawmakers told CNN will not be expeditious in the wake of Trump's actions and rhetoric. It's a dynamic that only serves to underscore the view shared by economic officials outside of the administration – and within. US economists polled by the Kent A Clark Center for Global Markets at the University of Chicago this week said there was no evidence to suggest the Bureau of Labor Statistics' jobs figures were politically engineered. Several economists surveyed raised significant concerns about the long-term damage Trump's attacks would do to the long-standing perception of reliable US economic data. That's a direct threat to Trump's own aspirations of a new 'Golden Age' for the US economy. 'It is in Trump's direct political interest to avoid this,' Strain said. 'But given his history of scoring own goals, I am worried,'
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
The White House is trying to change the conversation about Trump's BLS scandal
President Donald Trump claims, without a shred of evidence, that the government's premiere economic data operation nefariously engineered negative statistics 'for political purposes.' His top economic advisers don't share that view, even as they continue to defend his stunning – and largely impulsive – decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a poor jobs report last week. Trump says 'rigged.' His advisers say 'reform.' The rhetorical sleight of hand, difficult as it may be to catch as Trump's economic team takes pains to defend a fixation untethered to reality, captures an important window into the internal West Wing discussions about the next nominee to serve as commissioner of the BLS. Trump's economic advisers are fully aware of the widely acknowledged necessity of insulating – or at least attempting to shield – the next BLS chief from the perception of political interference, according to people familiar with the internal debate. 'The efficacy and the believability of our economic projections are very important,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on MSNBC this week as he argued for a more efficient and accurate data collection process. 'I think the replacement is going to be a highly competent statistician or labor economist and it will be someone, you know, who won't have errors of this magnitude.' One week after the BLS commissioner was ousted, Trump and his economic advisers have tried to clean up the damage by making the narrative about the need to modernize the agency to make the data more reliable and accurate. But that's easier said than done, and the administration is working to find someone reputable who won't freak out markets. 'It is imperative that Trump's nominee be perceived by businesses and investors as nonpartisan and independent of the White House,' Michael R. Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote this week. 'Because trust in the integrity of government data is a foundation of prosperity, it is in Trump's direct political interest to appoint an independent BLS chief.' Trump, at least publicly, isn't exactly making that process any easier and his political allies have pressed the White House to appoint an unabashed loyalist, people familiar with the matter told CNN. But Trump's economic advisers understand the bureaucratic constraints any nominee would face if confirmed for the role by the US Senate. The commissioner, after all, isn't responsible for collecting the data. That exceedingly arduous and labor-intensive process is conducted by hundreds of federal employees who Republicans and Democrats familiar with the process alike say pursue their mandate with an apolitical and dedicated approach. As the data comes into the agency, only about 40 career officials have access to the raw findings and are tasked with creating the final presentation for public release. The commissioner doesn't even see the data until it's largely locked in and complete – less than 48 hours before it publishes, according to Bill Beach, the conservative Republican Trump appointed to run the agency in his first term. 'Zero is the upper bound of that response,' Beach said when asked by CNN how much influence a commissioner has over the final numbers. 'There was no way for me to change the data. I could have said, oh, you people need to do a better job, the numbers are too low or too high and it would have made zero difference to that staff. In fact, they would have talked to me less.' That doesn't mean there has been a long-standing discussion about significant improvements that could be applied to the current process. The business response rate to the initial survey that comprises the jobs numbers has dropped dramatically in recent years. Technological upgrades have been weighed for years and are widely acknowledged as a necessity for an agency that has faced budget cuts and significant senior staff departures in recent years. 'There's always room for improvement,' Beach said. 'We need to have a better way of collecting these numbers in a more cost-effective way. That's what I hope the president does.' To this point, that hasn't happened. The administration has proposed an 8% cut to the agency's budget for the next fiscal year and has proposed cutting 150 positions. Lawmakers are set to dive into a fractious government funding debate when they return from their August recess and several senior Democratic aides say House and Senate appropriators plan to utilize Trump's decision to elevate the agency's work will turn it into an important part of the debate ahead. 'I wouldn't say try to do better with the same money,' Cathy Utgoff, who served as the agency's commissioner under President George W. Bush, told CNN. 'I would say you really need to have more money here, because you have to collect more data to make it more reliable.' For the moment, however, Trump's advisers are continuing the tenuous balancing act of highlighting the significant revisions without imposing long-term damage on a strained data operation often referred to as the 'gold standard' by economic policymakers around the world. 'What we need is a fresh set of eyes over the BLS,' National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said August 3 on NBC's Meet the Press. Hassett, in subsequent interview on Fox News Sunday, said that if he ran the BLS and had 'the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened.' Reform and transparency have been the throughline of the evolving defense provided by Trump's allies – even if Trump has shown no interest in the more nuanced rationale for his unprecedented move. The awkward dynamic was on full display in the Oval Office on Thursday, as Trump hastily summoned the White House press corps to display a simplistic chart displaying annual employment revisions under his predecessor. The data was delivered to Trump by Stephen Moore, the conservative economist who has served as an outside adviser to Trump at various points during his first and second administration. As Moore detailed the data making up the posterboard displayed for reporters, he was careful not to ascribe political motives – only to be interrupted by Trump after calling it a 'gigantic error.' 'I don't think it's an error,' Trump said as he cut in. 'I think they did it purposefully.' Moore recalibrated on the fly – carefully and with visible discomfort. 'You may well be right, but even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetence,' the senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation said in a hedged effort to avoid contradicting Trump's assertion. Trump has said he will announce his pick to lead the agency as soon as Friday. The nominee will face an intense confirmation process, which lawmakers told CNN will not be expeditious in the wake of Trump's actions and rhetoric. It's a dynamic that only serves to underscore the view shared by economic officials outside of the administration – and within. US economists polled by the Kent A Clark Center for Global Markets at the University of Chicago this week said there was no evidence to suggest the Bureau of Labor Statistics' jobs figures were politically engineered. Several economists surveyed raised significant concerns about the long-term damage Trump's attacks would do to the long-standing perception of reliable US economic data. That's a direct threat to Trump's own aspirations of a new 'Golden Age' for the US economy. 'It is in Trump's direct political interest to avoid this,' Strain said. 'But given his history of scoring own goals, I am worried,'
Newsweek
3 hours ago
- Newsweek
Marco Rubio's Quest To Make the State Department Great Again
Twenty-five years ago, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission described the State Department as a "crippled institution." Since then, things have only gotten worse. Traditionally, the State Department's six regional bureaus and their country-specific desks handled the entire world. Over the past 20 years, the department has created dozens of single-issue offices to handle everything from food security and climate change to women's empowerment. Some countries such as Iran, Venezuela, and even Tibet now have dedicated, independent offices. Anyone who has taken a course in economics understands the law of diminishing marginal returns. At some point, the benefit of adding another worker or widget is outweighed by the cost. That is the case at the Department of State. Too many bureaucrats, in too many offices, are chasing too many approvals to get anything done in a timely manner. Lacking the discipline of profit and loss, government bureaucracies will expand according to the resources provided. No bureaucrat was ever promoted for saying "I need a smaller staff." At the height of the Cold War, in 1970, the Department of State had 3,000 Foreign Service officers—the diplomats who staff our embassies abroad and policymaking offices in Washington. Today that number is nearly 14,000. Like a restaurant with too many waiters, the department's policy approval process has become a time-consuming, inefficient maze. Secretary Marco Rubio recently noted that policy memos require more than 40 signatures before hitting his desk. This suffocating "clearance process" inevitably adopts the least controversial course of action, promotes groupthink, and makes the emergence of original ideas nearly impossible. The budget story is hardly better. The department's inflation-adjusted budget has increased by 27 percent in the past decade alone. It would be difficult to argue that the quality of American diplomacy has increased by a similar amount. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gives a media briefing during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at the Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur on July 11, 2025. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gives a media briefing during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at the Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur on July 11, 2025. Mandel NGAN / POOL / AFP/Getty Images Marco Rubio is not the first secretary of state to realize that his department needed serious reform. Hillary Clinton launched the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review to address systemic problems. Rex Tillerson held listening sessions with employees, developed a reorganization plan, and made streamlining the department a top priority. Mike Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he intended to simplify the approval process and encourage creativity within the department. All these efforts faced stiff resistance from a variety of vested interests in the State Department, Congress, and Washington think tanks. Progress was minimal. Secretary Rubio is the first to take effective action. He is rebuilding the professional diplomatic service and getting back to basics: Reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, streamlining decisionmaking, and focusing on core national interests. Specifically, Rubio has folded USAID into the State Department, something that countries like Australia and the U.K. did years ago. He has placed many of USAID's responsibilities with the newly reenergized regional bureaus, ensuring that assistance will be aligned with policy. He has closed many independent offices while preserving country desks, American citizen services, and diplomatic security functions. While 15 percent of the D.C. workforce was released, overall staffing is down only 2 percent and core functions have been preserved. Reactions to Rubio's reforms have been mixed. The former director general of the Foreign Service, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has called the layoffs "cruel and unacceptable." Did she and other critics think it was cruel to lay off construction workers when President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline? Rubio's leadership team cut only 1,300 out of a workforce of 27,000 U.S. civil servants and Foreign Service personnel. A much larger number departed government service under a generous voluntary program—offered not once, but twice—that provided up to six months of paid administrative leave. This strikes us as the antithesis of callousness. Taking the opposite view of these critics is the nonpartisan Ben Franklin Fellowship, of which we are both members. Composed of current and retired foreign affairs professionals, the fellowship has long supported American sovereignty over globalization, meritocracy over DEI, and the careful stewardship of resources over continuous government growth and budget deficits. A few weeks ago, an anonymous poem circulated in the State Department. Entitled, "Twas the Night Before Layoffs," it reads in part: And far above it, in paneled repose, The Secretary cackled, indifferent, composed... 'Too slow, too global, too nuanced, too woke, This place needs a purge, not another soft poke.' Ben Franklin Fellows would tend to agree. Whether one sides with Thomas-Greenfield or the Ben Franklin Fellows, one thing is certain: Effective diplomacy remains essential to American security. To deliver it, the State Department will need to reassert itself, clearly define its competitive advantage over other agencies, and improve its methods of delivery. That is now happening. Secretary Rubio is constructing a Department of State where groupthink is out and intellectual rigor is in; where DEI is replaced with merit; and where training focuses on winning in a tough world. He owes the nation nothing less. David H. Rundell is a former Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Riyadh and author of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former Political Advisor to the U.S Central Command and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Together they have more than fifty years of diplomatic service. Both are members of the Ben Franklin Fellowship. The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
