On June 24, 2026, in Washington, DC, we convened policymakers, researchers, journalists, technology experts, and political strategists for an event designed to help shape the next phase of American political debate. The convening elevated the fight against concentrated private power as a central priority for democratic renewal while helping refine and mainstream emerging arguments around platform power and political economy.

Join the News/Media Alliance and the Center for Media and Digital Governance at Open Markets Institute for a conversation about the past, present, and future of AI content licensing. Armed with breaking analysis from two freshly released CMDG reports on the AI content marketplace, experts from these two organizations will lay out the state of the market today and how it can, and must, evolve to serve publishers of all sizes. From policy proposals to voluntary collective licensing, they'll discuss the most promising solutions to the many challenges facing media entities, and where the industry should go from here.

Transportation policy analyst Arnav Rao warned on the Powering America Podcast that the proposed UP-NS merger would consolidate an already-concentrated industry and amplify monopoly pricing power rather than improve efficiency. Rao argued that railroads have used market dominance to raise prices faster than inflation, driving shippers to trucks.

CJL Director Courtney Radsch joins the talk on how Trump administration’s visa restriction policy targeting noncitizen researchers, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers is a dangerous attack on independent research and free expression, warning that it could chill the study of platform harms, weaken democratic accountability, and let the government decide who is allowed to scrutinize powerful tech companies.