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38 state AGs, DoJ announce plan to end Google’s search monopoly

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A coalition of 38 state attorneys general, alongside the Department of Justice (DOJ), has announced a final plan to break up Google’s search engine monopoly. The proposed remedies include forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser and, potentially, its Android operating system. The move follows a court ruling last year that found Google guilty of monopolistic practices in online search.

Key Details:

  • The plan would require Google to sell Chrome and could extend to Android if initial measures fail.
  • The initiative aims to restore competition in the search and search advertising markets, according to Colorado AG Phil Weiser.
  • Google argues the DOJ’s proposal is overly aggressive and claims it would harm consumers and U.S. technology leadership.

Diving Deeper:

The Justice Department and 38 state attorneys general have put forward a final set of remedies aimed at dismantling Google’s dominance in online search and digital advertising. The proposal, announced by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, seeks to correct years of alleged anti-competitive behavior by the tech giant.

“For years, the Google browser has been the dominant gateway for users to search the internet,” Weiser said, emphasizing that Google’s monopolistic grip has “stifled innovation, undermined competition, and harmed consumers.” The coalition’s proposed remedies focus on breaking up Google’s search empire to promote a more competitive marketplace.

One of the most significant aspects of the proposal is the forced divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser, which currently serves as the primary access point for billions of users. Additionally, if Google is found to be undermining the decree’s effectiveness, the company could also be required to sell off Android, further reducing its influence over digital search.

This aggressive action follows a federal court ruling last year that determined Google had engaged in monopolistic practices. The ruling came after extensive legal battles between the government and the tech giant, reinforcing concerns that Google’s dominance in online search has hurt competition and limited consumer choice.

However, Google has strongly pushed back against the proposal. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, criticized the DOJ’s intervention, calling it an overreach. “DOJ’s proposal would harm American consumers and undermine America’s global technology leadership,” Mulholland said, signaling the company’s intent to challenge the ruling in court.

A court hearing on the proposed remedies is set to begin on April 21 and is expected to conclude by May 9. Google has already indicated that it will appeal any ruling that forces it to break up its core business, setting the stage for another high-stakes legal battle between the tech giant and federal regulators.

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Trump to impose 30% tariff on EU, Mexico

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From The Center Square

President Donald Trump on Saturday said he will impose 30% tariffs on imported goods from the European Union and Mexico in his latest move to balance trade between the U.S. and other countries.

The tariffs are set to go into effect Aug. 1.

Saturday’s announcement comes a day after the U.S. Department of Treasury released a report Friday showing that tariff revenue helped revenue in the month of June exceed expenses by $27 billion.

“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU and posted on his Truth Social account. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”

The 30% tariff on EU goods is higher than expected. EU trade ministers are scheduled to meet Monday and could agree to increase tariffs on U.S. goods as retaliation.

In his letter to Mexico, Trump said the U.S. neighbor to the south has helped stem the flow of illegal narcotics and people from entering the country but added that it needed to do more to prevent North America from being a “Narco-Trafficking Playground.”

Earlier in the week, Trump announced new tariffs on several other countries, including 20% tariffs on imports  from the Philippines; 25% on Brunei and Moldova; 30% on Algeria, Iraq and Libya; and 50% on Brazil.

All of the new tariffs announced this week are scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1.

• The Center Square reporters Therese Boudreaux and Andrew Rice contributed to this report.

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Prime minister can make good on campaign promise by reforming Canada Health Act

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From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

While running for the job of leading the country, Prime Minister Carney promised to defend the Canada Health Act (CHA) and build a health-care system Canadians can be proud of. Unfortunately, to have any hope of accomplishing the latter promise, he must break the former and reform the CHA.

As long as Ottawa upholds and maintains the CHA in its current form, Canadians will not have a timely, accessible and high-quality universal health-care system they can be proud of.

Consider for a moment the remarkably poor state of health care in Canada today. According to international comparisons of universal health-care systems, Canadians endure some of the lowest access to physicians, medical technologies and hospital beds in the developed world, and wait in queues for health care that routinely rank among the longest in the developed world. This is all happening despite Canadians paying for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal-access health-care systems.

None of this is new. Canada’s poor ranking in the availability of services—despite high spending—reaches back at least two decades. And wait times for health care have nearly tripled since the early 1990s. Back then, in 1993, Canadians could expect to wait 9.3 weeks for medical treatment after GP referral compared to 30 weeks in 2024.

But fortunately, we can find the solutions to our health-care woes in other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia, which all provide more timely access to quality universal care. Every one of these countries requires patient cost-sharing for physician and hospital services, and allows private competition in the delivery of universally accessible services with money following patients to hospitals and surgical clinics. And all these countries allow private purchases of health care, as this reduces the burden on the publicly-funded system and creates a valuable pressure valve for it.

And this brings us back to the CHA, which contains the federal government’s requirements for provincial policymaking. To receive their full federal cash transfers for health care from Ottawa (totalling nearly $55 billion in 2025/26) provinces must abide by CHA rules and regulations.

And therein lies the rub—the CHA expressly disallows requiring patients to share the cost of treatment while the CHA’s often vaguely defined terms and conditions have been used by federal governments to discourage a larger role for the private sector in the delivery of health-care services.

Clearly, it’s time for Ottawa’s approach to reflect a more contemporary understanding of how to structure a truly world-class universal health-care system.

Prime Minister Carney can begin by learning from the federal government’s own welfare reforms in the 1990s, which reduced federal transfers and allowed provinces more flexibility with policymaking. The resulting period of provincial policy innovation reduced welfare dependency and government spending on social assistance (i.e. savings for taxpayers). When Ottawa stepped back and allowed the provinces to vary policy to their unique circumstances, Canadians got improved outcomes for fewer dollars.

We need that same approach for health care today, and it begins with the federal government reforming the CHA to expressly allow provinces the ability to explore alternate policy approaches, while maintaining the foundational principles of universality.

Next, the Carney government should either hold cash transfers for health care constant (in nominal terms), reduce them or eliminate them entirely with a concordant reduction in federal taxes. By reducing (or eliminating) the pool of cash tied to the strings of the CHA, provinces would have greater freedom to pursue reform policies they consider to be in the best interests of their residents without federal intervention.

After more than four decades of effectively mandating failing health policy, it’s high time to remove ambiguity and minimize uncertainty—and the potential for politically motivated interpretations—in the CHA. If Prime Minister Carney wants Canadians to finally have a world-class health-care system then can be proud of, he should allow the provinces to choose their own set of universal health-care policies. The first step is to fix, rather than defend, the 40-year-old legislation holding the provinces back.

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