SOUR NOTE: The Justice department yesterday sued to break up Live Nation, the concert giant that also owns Ticketmaster thereby controlling a majority of the venues and sales.

  The lawsuit joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia accuses Live Nation of dominating the live performance industry with exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services, and threatening rivals with financial retribution. The government argues that it all results in higher prices for concert-goers. 

  “It is time for fans and artists to stop paying the price for Live Nation’s monopoly,” said Merrick Garland, the attorney general. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster. The American people are ready for it.”

  The 120-page complaint says Live Nation controls around 60 percent of concert promotions at major venues in the US and roughly 80 percent of primary ticketing at major venues. The lawsuit comes even though the government approved the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster 14 years ago.

  Live Nation denies that it is a monopoly and says that breaking it up would not result in lower ticket prices or fees. 

FINAL EXAMS: Continuing to hunt for the heads of college presidents, House Republicans yesterday grilled the leaders of Northwestern, Rutgers, and UCLA about anti-Semitism on campus and what’s being done about it. They asked why so few student leaders had been disciplined. 

  Looking another big moment in the press, New York’s Elise Stefanik held up a document with a big red “F” circled on it. Demanding simple “yes” or “no” answers, the representatives at times equated the pro-Palestinian protests on campus with anti-Semitism. They were looking for a repeat of those moments that helped to topple the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania … but this time they didn’t get it.

  While this was going on, pro-Palestinian protesters set up a new encampment at UCLA where they had been cleared out previously by the police. At Harvard, several hundred graduates walked out of the commencement ceremony protesting the decision to bar 13 fellow graduates from attending and chanting “Free Palestine!” Harvard had blocked the 13 from receiving their degrees because of their participation in the three-week pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard.

ECON 101: The Dow tumbled by more than 600 points yesterday as investors seem to be fretting about whether interest rates will ever be lowered, making it the worst day of the year in a year so far of record highs.  

  This came after the Federal reserve released notes from their last policy meeting in which some officials even discussed the possibility of raising interest rates and whether there’s a danger of inflation resurging.

  Nevertheless, mortgage rates dipped below 7% yesterday, the third weekly drop.

THE PAYING FIELD: The NCAA and five power conferences have voted to approve settlement of a lawsuit that will result in paying big time college athletes. Major college sports make millions for the schools and coaches, but nothing for the athletes. It’s professional sports for everyone but the performers.

  The settlement is expected to include payments of about $2.7 billion to former Division I athletes dating back to 2016 as back-pay for lost earnings on their name, image, and likeness.

  The NCAA for years has resisted paying college athletes, claiming it’s amateur sports. But the athletes know there’s huge amounts of money being made off their games and they aren’t getting any. By one estimate, if the NCAA took this to trial and lost, it might have ended up paying $20 billion.

THE WAR ROOM: Israeli forces have recovered the bodies of three more hostages in northern Gaza as operations intensify in the southern Rafah area. It’s now estimated that 125 hostages living and dead are still in Gaza. Israel says it is still negotiating a deal for their release.

THE VOTE: The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a congressional redistricting that cut Black voters out of the district currently held by Republican Rep.  Nancy Mace. The NAACP had claimed that the district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

  In a 6-3 ruling divided along conservative-liberal lines, the Supremes said the lawsuit failed to prove that the state legislature was motivated by race when it moved thousands of Black voters out of the state’s 1st Congressional District. Justice Samuel Alito suggested in his majority opinion that the legislature was merely seeking to make the seat safer for Republicans, which does not violate the Constitution. Black voters are more likely to vote Democrat.

THE SPIN RACK: The Norfolk Southern railroad has reached a $310 million settlement with the federal government for the fiery and chemically polluting 2023 Ohio train derailment. The railroad already agreed to settle a lawsuit by local residents for $600 million. — The Louisiana legislature voted to reclassify two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances making it harder to obtain them in that state. Medically the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol are not considered dangerous and this makes it more difficult for pregnant women to have a medically-induced abortion. — The NY Times reports that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has emerged as the top contender to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Cotton is the senator who couldn’t understand that a tech executive from Singapore was not a Chinese communist. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Tech mogul Elon Musk said at an artificial intelligence conference that AI will take all our jobs and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “Probably none of us will have a job,” Musk said. “If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job,” he posited. “But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”

  Does this mean that we can get rid of Elon Musk?

-30-