DOJ Antitrust Shuffle

The United States Department of Justice is trying to prove Apple boxed rivals out of the iPhone, and Apple’s latest move is to ask a United States judge to help it get Samsung files from South Korea. Apple says Samsung’s internal reports could show how much competition it actually faces from another giant phone maker. (macrumors.com) That request matters because the Apple case is no longer stuck at the starting gate. The Department of Justice sued Apple on March 21, 2024, and a federal judge refused to throw the case out on June 30, 2025, which pushed the fight into evidence-gathering and depositions. (justice.gov) (macrumors.com) At almost the same time, the lawyers who run these cases keep changing. Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater stepped down on February 12, 2026, after less than a year leading the antitrust division, and Politico reported that her deputy Mark Hamer had also left that week. (politico.com) The exits did not stop there. Bloomberg Law reported on April 8, 2026, that the department’s top antitrust litigator and three senior trial attorneys handling cases against Live Nation, Apple, and Google were also leaving the agency. (news.bloomberglaw.com) That report landed one month after the Department of Justice cut a deal with Live Nation in the middle of trial. Reuters, via Insurance Journal, said on March 9, 2026, that the settlement came after the case had already started, and Politico reported the deal would make Ticketmaster open parts of its platform to rivals and pay roughly $200 million to participating states. (insurancejournal.com) (politico.com) Some states hated that deal enough to keep going without Washington. Politico reported on March 9, 2026, that more than two dozen states refused to sign the settlement, and Courthouse News later reported that 36 states plus the District of Columbia resumed the case after the federal government stepped aside. (politico.com) (courthousenews.com) That is the part that makes the personnel shuffle hard to read from the outside. In live events, the Department of Justice backed away from the cleanest remedy it had asked for in 2024, which was forcing Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster, and accepted conduct rules instead. (insurancejournal.com) (politico.com) In healthcare, the same department has shown the opposite instinct. On August 7, 2025, it required UnitedHealth and Amedisys to divest at least 164 home health and hospice locations across 19 states to settle its merger case, which the department called the largest divestiture of outpatient healthcare services by number of facilities. (justice.gov 1) (justice.gov 2) The newest public filing list shows the division is still bringing fresh cases even while its bench is moving. On March 26, 2026, the antitrust division sued New York-Presbyterian Hospital over contract terms that it says block lower-cost healthcare options for patients in New York. (justice.gov) So the picture right now is not “soft” or “hard” antitrust in one direction. It is a department that is still pressing monopoly cases against Apple and others, still willing to demand asset sales in some mergers, but also willing to settle a marquee breakup case with Live Nation on narrower terms while senior litigators walk out the door. (justice.gov 1) (justice.gov 2) (news.bloomberglaw.com)