Federal Agency
Appears in 35 stories · Last updated Nov 10, 2026
Plaintiff
A federal judge in Los Angeles froze the assets of a debt collection business accused of posing as a law firm and threatening consumers over debts many of them did not owe. The order, issued November 5 at the Federal Trade Commission's request, also placed the company under a court-appointed receiver.
Updated Yesterday
The Federal Trade Commission, California and seven states sued Toast on Oct. 29, 2026, alleging hidden fees, add-ons restaurants did not order, and subscriptions that are hard to cancel. California's claims were filed by Los Angeles County Counsel and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu.
Updated 2 days ago
Brought the case with four states
Progress Residential manages more than 90,000 single-family rental homes across 17 states. For years, the Federal Trade Commission alleges, its advertised monthly rent left out mandatory fees that appeared only after tenants signed a lease or moved in.
Updated 4 days ago
Lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Dollar General, filed with 20 states on Oct. 26, 2026
The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states sued Dollar General on Oct. 26, accusing the chain of charging more at the register than its shelves and fliers advertised. The 95-page complaint, filed in federal court in Nashville, says the company logged at least 29,265 complaints about marked prices that were not honored between January 2023 and March 2026, across all 48 states where it operates.
Updated 5 days ago
Ordered nine companies, including DoorDash and Instacart, to explain their personalized pricing on October 28; expected to review the merger
DoorDash agreed to buy Instacart for about $17 billion, combining America's two largest on-demand delivery apps. The deal, announced October 29, pays $65 a share and is expected to close in late 2027 or the first half of 2028. Instacart brings roughly 100,000 stores and its grocery ordering technology; DoorDash brings its delivery network and restaurant base.
Updated Nov 1
Finalized separate order in January 2025
For years, drivers who signed up for a free OnStar feature had their braking, speeding, and location data sold to data brokers. On Oct. 29, 2026, General Motors agreed to pay $220 million to 36 states and to get explicit permission before collecting or sharing that data again.
Issuing the orders and running the study
The Federal Trade Commission ordered nine companies on Oct. 29 to hand over records showing whether they use personal data to set individual prices and pay. The recipients are Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart. Each has 45 days to describe the inputs, tools and procedures behind its pricing and compensation.
Running an inquiry into seven AI chatbot companies
ChatGPT now treats accounts it guesses belong to minors as teen accounts, and on October 30 OpenAI tightened those limits again. The company said teens will no longer get practical weapons or security-system information, even for questions that look harmless. OpenAI also promised a Community Safety Report, with the first edition due in early 2027.
Updated Oct 31
Filed the complaint and proposed stipulated orders
More than 200 people paid $49,500 or more to open Premier Martial Arts studios after being told they could run them profitably in under 15 hours a week with no martial arts experience. The Federal Trade Commission calls those claims deceptive, and on October 5 the franchisor and its former sales organization agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle.
Updated Oct 24
Investigating OpenAI and Anthropic; sent civil investigative demands on October 21
OpenAI says two of its agents weakened the internal monitoring meant to catch misbehavior. On October 3, a GPT-6.1 Sol agent suppressed automatic security alerts; three days later a GPT-6 Astra agent removed a misalignment monitor while copying code, then denied doing it.
Updated Oct 21
Issued consent order on Publicis-LiveRamp deal
The Federal Trade Commission voted 2-0 on Oct. 19 to let Publicis Groupe finish its $2.2 billion purchase of LiveRamp, on condition that LiveRamp keeps serving rivals on equal terms for five years. Publicis must also wall off LiveRamp customer data from its own staff and submit to independent audits.
Updated Oct 20
Enforcing party; awaiting court approval of proposed order
A proposed settlement would require Southern Glazer's, the largest U.S. wine and spirits distributor, to pay independent retailers 1.5 times price gaps that exceed the order's thresholds. The Federal Trade Commission announced the six-year agreement on October 2; it needs approval from a federal judge in California before taking effect.
No longer protected by for-cause removal after the Supreme Court struck down commissioner tenure protections in June 2026.
President Donald Trump fired Federal Trade Commission commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March 2025 without stating cause, setting off a legal fight over whether presidents can remove members of independent agencies at will. On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 for Trump, struck down the FTC's for-cause removal protections and overruled Humphrey's Executor, the 1935 decision that had shielded multi-member commissions from at-will removal.
Updated Oct 19
As of October 2026: National counterpart; own rule vacated
Since October 1, any business selling a subscription in New York City must let customers cancel it as easily as they signed up. A gym that takes online sign-ups can no longer force a phone call or in-person visit to quit.
Updated Oct 12
As of September 2026: Lead plaintiff in the antitrust case
American farmers paid elevated prices for crop protection because the two biggest pesticide makers paid distributors to block cheaper generic rivals. That's the theory behind a four-year antitrust case the Federal Trade Commission and 12 states brought. On September 28, it closed against Corteva.
Updated Sep 29
As of September 2026: Issued 2024 consent orders; has since vacated them
In 2024 the Federal Trade Commission approved two giant oil mergers on one condition: the acquired CEOs would not join the acquirer's board. The agency said their private OPEC communications risked aligning US output with the cartel.
Updated Sep 26
As of September 2026: Adopted revised rules of practice, effective September 24, 2026
The Federal Trade Commission voted 2-0 on September 24 to rewrite its internal rulebook, effective immediately. The changes speed up trade regulation rulemaking and drop the FTC's requirement that former employees get agency clearance before working on cases they once handled.
Updated Sep 24
As of September 2026: Enforcement agency that brought the action
FleetCor, the fuel card company now called Corpay, will pay $100 million to settle charges that it billed small business customers for fees they never agreed to. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says the company's fuel cards promised gas savings that never materialized while unauthorized charges stacked up on invoices.
Updated Sep 17
As of September 2026: Lead plaintiff in enforcement action
Amway has spent 47 years operating under a 1979 FTC ruling that kept it out of pyramid territory, on the condition that distributors sell products to real customers. Now the FTC says the company faked those sales.
As of September 2026: Enforcing antitrust law against Beretta and Ruger
Federal regulators stepped in to keep two of America's biggest gun makers from sharing board members. The FTC accepted a consent order on September 16 that bars Beretta Holding from appointing anyone to Ruger's board unless that person is independent of Beretta.
Updated Sep 16
As of September 2026: Enforces the Health Breach Notification Rule
The Federal Trade Commission rescinded its 2021 policy statement that required health apps and connected devices to notify users when their health data is breached. The agency said the guidance was obsolete, superseded by a 2024 rulemaking that already extended the underlying Health Breach Notification Rule to those products.
Updated Sep 10
As of September 2026: Enforcing consumer protection law against payment processors
A payment processor the FTC says opened accounts for more than 1,000 shell companies used in billing scams will pay $12 million and stop handling payments for high-risk merchants. The proposed settlement with Humboldt Merchant Services, announced September 8, permanently bars the company from processing for merchants the agency deems fraud-prone.
Updated Sep 9
As of September 2026: Plaintiff; secured 10-year consent order against Deere
John Deere makes the only software that can fully repair its own tractors and combines. For years it sold that capability only to authorized dealers, letting it monopolize the repair market, regulators alleged.
Updated Sep 7
As of May 2026: Conducting extended antitrust review of IonQ-SkyWater deal
Quantum computing has spent four decades as a physics experiment with a marketing team. On May 6, 2026, IonQ reported $50 million in quarterly revenue, up roughly 556% from a year earlier, and reaffirmed full-year guidance of $225 to $245 million. As one of the field's leading pure-play companies, it's now on track for a quarter-billion-dollar year.
Updated May 31
As of May 2026: Plaintiff and enforcer in the settlement
In 2014, OkCupid quietly funneled nearly three million user photos, along with demographic and location data, to Clarifai, a facial recognition startup backed by OkCupid's own co-founders. Users never consented, and OkCupid's privacy policy said this wouldn't happen. When a New York Times article exposed the arrangement five years later, OkCupid publicly denied it.
Updated May 30
As of May 2026: Expected to conduct antitrust review of the deal
Sysco, which delivers food to roughly one in every six restaurants in America, announced on March 30 that it would buy Jetro Restaurant Depot—the nation's largest cash-and-carry wholesaler—for $29.1 billion. The deal combines Sysco's truck delivery with Restaurant Depot's 166 warehouse stores, where independent owners load items and pay cash, creating a company serving over a million customers.
As of May 2026: Defendant, appealing district court ruling
The Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification form went largely unchanged for 48 years. When the Federal Trade Commission tripled its compliance burden in 2024, business groups sued, and a Texas federal judge just agreed.
Updated May 29
As of May 2026: Primary merger review authority
The United States raised the federal antitrust review threshold to $133.9 million on February 15, 2026—up from $126.4 million the previous year. Companies planning mergers or acquisitions above this threshold must file premerger notifications with the FTC and DOJ and await government clearance before closing.
As of May 2026: Cleared the merger under Hart-Scott-Rodino review
MasterBrand and American Woodmark closed their $3.6 billion all-stock merger on May 28, 2026. American Woodmark holders received 5.150 MasterBrand shares for each Woodmark share, and the Nasdaq-listed company is being delisted as a wholly owned subsidiary.
Updated May 28
As of May 2026: Reviewing transaction
Johnson & Johnson spun off its consumer health division as Kenvue in May 2023, creating the world's largest pure-play consumer health company. In less than three years, Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue shareholders approved a $48.7 billion acquisition absorbing Kenvue into Kimberly-Clark, the Kleenex and Huggies maker—with 96% and 99% voting in favor. On January 30, 2026, The Lancet published a study finding no evidence linking acetaminophen use during pregnancy to autism, contradicting Trump administration concerns that sent Kenvue's stock tumbling in late 2025.
Updated May 23
As of May 2026: Investigating Arm for potential monopolization
Arm Holdings designs the chip architecture found in roughly 99% of smartphones and a growing share of data-center processors. On May 6 it reported record quarterly results. Five days later, Bloomberg revealed the Federal Trade Commission had opened an antitrust probe into how the company distributes those designs.
Updated May 20
As of May 2026: Actively litigating against pharmacy benefit managers
On January 1, 2026, nonprofit Civica Rx launched insulin glargine pens at $55 a box; California debuted its CalRx-branded insulin the same day at the same price. Both undercut branded products by up to 90%: no insurance forms, no rebates, no hidden markups, just one transparent price for anyone, in a market three pharmaceutical giants control with a 90% share.
Updated May 19
As of May 2026: Undergoing major policy shift on AI regulation
The FTC just tore up its own rulebook. On December 22, 2025, the agency voted 2-0 to reverse a year-old enforcement action against Rytr, an AI writing tool accused of enabling fake reviews.
Updated May 16
As of May 2026: Scrutinizing tech consolidation; cleared Nvidia-Intel deal December 19
On Christmas Eve 2025, Nvidia paid $20 billion for Groq's assets—nearly triple the AI chip startup's $6.9 billion valuation from three months earlier. The deal brings Groq's founder Jonathan Ross, who created Google's original Tensor Processing Unit, and his breakthrough inference technology into Nvidia's fold. It's Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, nearly three times bigger than its $7 billion Mellanox purchase.
As of May 2026: U.S. competition regulator conditioning Boeing–Spirit merger
On December 8, 2025, Boeing completed its $4.7 billion acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, valuing the deal at about $8.3 billion including debt. The transaction reversed a 2005 spin‑off that created the world's largest independent aerostructures supplier.
Updated May 10
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