After a five-year legal showdown pitting the U.S. Department of Justice against Google, a federal judge concluded that the disruptive forces of artificial intelligence technology will have a better chance of hobbling an illegal monopoly than any restraints imposed by a court order.

That was one of the underlying themes of a highly-anticipated ruling issued late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta. After ruling that Google’s dominant search engine had turned into an illegal monopoly back in August 2024, the judge spent the next 13 months mulling the best way to rein in the technology powerhouse’s bad behavior.

At the same time, the technology landscape had been thrust into the throes of a tectonic shift that couldn’t have been anticipated in October 2020 when the Justice Department filed its landmark antitrust case against Google. At that time, few people had even heard of OpenAI, let alone its chatbot ChatGPT, which wasn’t released until late 2022.

Artificial intelligence rarely came up during the 2024 trial that culminated in Google being declared a monopoly, but the technology’s role became a focal point in t he remedy hearings earlier this spring — especially AI’s role in spawning conversational “answer engines” from ChatGPT and Perplexity. Those advances made the judge reluctant to use his legal power to override what may already be happening through technological evolution.

Mehta ended up crafting a subdued ruling that rejected the Justice Department’s push to have Google sell its popular Chrome web browser and block the company from paying — more than $20 billion annually — to make its search engine the default on popular devices and web browsers.

Instead of embracing those drastic measures, Mehta chose to prescribe what most analysts and antitrust experts viewed as a light-handed punishment, which propelled the stock price of Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. to a new high of $230.86 during Wednesday’s trading.

But the judge is still shaking things up by requiring Google to share some of the secret sauce in its recipe for success — the massive trove of search data that it has accumulated from billions of users since the company’s 1998 inception in a Silicon Valley garage. Parts of those databases will be opened up to rival search engines such as DuckDuckGo and other “qualified competitors.”

Mehta’s ruling is being viewed widely as little more than a slap on the wrist, prompting reactions of disappointment and disdain. “It is a historic misfire that fails to meet the enormity of the finding that Google is a monopolist in online search,” said Christo Wilson, a Northeastern University computer sciences professor, who has studied Google’s operations.

Investors are clearly betting that it will remain mostly business as usual at Google, which is expected to generate nearly $400 billion in revenue this year. As of early Wednesday afternoon, Alphabet’s stock price had surged by 9%, creating an additional $230 billion in shareholder wealth.

The Trump Administration still finds reason to celebrate

Even though the judge rebuffed most of the Justice Department’s proposed remedies, the agency maintained the case would foster more competition in the online search market.

“This decision marks an important step forward in the Department of Justice’s ongoing fight to protect American consumers,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

The case is uniquely tied to President Donald Trump, given that it began during his first term in office and is wrapping up during the early stages of his second stint in the White House.

But outsiders don’t see much for the Justice Department to crow about in Mehta’s ruling, especially since it explicitly cited the attempt to force a breakup of Google as a bridge too far.

The decision “may prove to be at best a pyrrhic victory,” predicted Joseph V. Coniglio, director of antitrust and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank that gets some of its funding from Alphabet and other technology companies.

“After making the legally sound and morally courageous decision to find Google liable for illegal monopolistic practices, Judge Mehta apparently decided that actually enforcing the law was more than he could stomach,” lamented Barry Lynn, executive director for the Open Markets Institute, a group focused on minimizing corporate power.

Will consumers’ search experience change?

The most noticeable changes in Google will probably continue to come through its responses to AI-driven competition from ChatGPT, Perplexity and others. That’s been the case since Google began to highlight AI-produced summaries at the top of its search results last year and then introduced its own version of an answer engine — via AI mode — a few months ago.

But Google will probably still be the main engine answering queries entered on the iPhone and other internet access points since the judge decided that the company is still allowed to dole out billions to be the default search choice on devices and browsers. The rationale for allowing all that money to flow went something like this: If the payments were banned, Google would be able to hoard the cash to become even more powerful and most consumers would still end up using its search engine on the iPhone and other devices because it’s still best in class.

Investors also liked the idea of that part of the search status quo being maintained, paving the way for Apple to continue to be paid more than $20 billion annually by Google. Apple’s shares rose more than 3% in Wednesday’s afternoon trading.

Google will work to share its data

The logistics of sharing all of that search data still needs to be worked out, but Mehta did try to limit access to Google’s data in a way to protect consumer privacy. He also wants to give Google rivals just enough information that will allow them to improve the relevance of their own search results, but prevent competitors from poaching all the information that Google has stockpiled during the past 27 years.

It’s still unclear when the data sharing will begin because Google could still delay Mehta’s ruling from taking effect through legal appeals. The company has already vowed to appeal last year’s decision condemning its search engine as a monopoly, a process that couldn’t start until the remedy ruling was made.

The Justice Department also said it is weighing a possible appeal in an attempt to gain more court-ordered changes to Google’s business practices.

Michael Liedtke, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse made their voices heard Tuesday on Capitol Hill, pressuring lawmakers to force the release of the sex trafficking investigation into the late financier and pushing back President Donald Trump’s effort to dismiss the issue as a “hoax.”

In a news conference on the Capitol lawn that drew hundreds of supporters and chants of “release the files,” the women shared — some publicly for the first time — how they were lured into Epstein’s abuse by his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. They demanded that the Trump administration provide transparency and accountability for what they endured as teenagers.

It was a striking stand as the push for disclosure of the so-called Epstein files reached a pivotal moment in Washington. Lawmakers are battling over how Congress should delve into the Epstein saga while the Republican president, after initially signaling support for transparency on the campaign trail, has been dismissing the matter as a “Democrat hoax.”

“No matter what you do it’s going to keep going,” Trump said Wednesday. He added, “Really, I think it’s enough.”

But the survivors on Capitol Hill, as well as at least one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, disagreed. Some of the women pleaded for Trump to support their cause.

“It feels like you just want to explode inside because nobody, again, is understanding that this is a real situation. These women are real. We’re here in person,” said Haley Robson, one of the survivors who said she is a registered Republican.

Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges that said he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of underage girls. The case was brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of nearly identical allegations. Epstein was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them.

Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime confidant and former girlfriend, was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for luring teenage girls for him to abuse. Four women testified at her trial that they were abused by Epstein as teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at his homes in Florida, New York and New Mexico. The allegations have also spawned dozens of lawsuits.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is usually closely aligned with Trump, described her support for a bill that would force the Justice Department to release the information it has compiled on Epstein as a moral fight against sexual predation.

“This isn’t one political party or the other. It’s a culmination of everyone work together to silence these women and protect Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal,” Greene said at the news conference.

She is one of four Republicans — three of them women — who have defied House GOP leadership and the White House in an effort to force a vote on their bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to quash the effort by putting forward his own resolution and arguing that a concurrent investigation by the House Oversight Committee is the best way for Congress to deliver transparency.

“I think the Oversight probe is going to be wide and expansive, and they’re going to follow the truth wherever it leads,” Johnson, R-La., said.

He added that the White House was complying with the committee to release information and that he had spoken with Trump about it Tuesday night. “He says, ‘Get it out there, put it all out there,’” Johnson told reporters.

The Oversight Committee on Tuesday night released what it said was the first tranche of documents and files it has received from the Justice Department on the Epstein case. The folders — posted on Google Drive — contained hundreds of image files of years-old court filings related to Epstein, but contained practically nothing new.

Meanwhile, the White House was warning House members that support for the bill to require the DOJ to release the files would be seen as a hostile act. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who is pressing for the bill, said that the White House was sending that message because “They’ve dug in.”

“They decided they don’t want it released,” he said. “It’s a political threat.”

But with Trump sending a strong message and Republican leadership moving forward with an alternative resolution, Massie was left looking for support from at least two more Republicans willing to cross political lines. It would take six GOP members, as well as all House Democrats, to force a vote on their bill. And even if that passes the House, it would still need to pass the Senate and be signed by Trump.

Still, the survivors saw this moment as their best chance in years to gain some justice for what had been done by Epstein, who died in as New York jail cell in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

“Justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations decades overdue” Jess Michaels, a survivor who said she was first abused by Epstein in 1991, told the rally on the Capitol lawn. “This moment began with Epstein’s crimes. But it’s going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability.”

Stephen Groves, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The conservative news network Newsmax filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fox News on Wednesday, saying Fox has sought to maintain its market dominance through intimidation and exclusionary business practices designed to stifle competition.

Fox has sought to block television distributors from carrying Newsmax or minimize its exposure, pressured guests not to appear on the rival network and hired private detectives to investigate Newsmax executives, said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in south Florida. Newsmax seeks a jury trial.

Fox, in a statement, said “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”

David Bauder, The Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — The Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, believing the Trump administration is putting Americans’ health and safety at risk by politicizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The move comes with COVID-19 cases rising and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has restructured and downsized the CDC and attempted to advance anti-vaccine policies that are contradicted by decades of scientific research. Concerns about staffing and budget cuts were heightened after the White House sought to oust the agency’s director and some top CDC leaders resigned in protest.

“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the governors said in a joint statement.

“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisers, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health are placing lives at risk,” California State Health Officer Erica Pan said in the news release.

Washington state Health Secretary Dennis Worsham said public health is about prevention — “preventing illness, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing early, avoidable deaths.”

“Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives,” Oregon Health Director Sejal Hathi said. “But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”

Partnership seeks expert medical advice

The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, said a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew G. Nixon shot back in a statement Wednesday that “Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies.”

He said the administration’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”

Florida announced Wednesday that it plans to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to curb vaccine requirements and other health mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public health agencies across nation start vaccine efforts

Meanwhile, public health agencies across the country have started taking steps to ensure their states have access to vaccines after U.S. regulators came out with new policies that limited access to COVID-19 shots.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s health department said last week it is seeking advice from medical experts and its own Immunization Advisory Committee on COVID-19 vaccines and other immunizations for the fall respiratory season.

The health department plans to provide citizens “with specific guidance by the end of September to help Illinois health care providers and residents make informed decisions about vaccination and protecting themselves and their loved ones,” Health Director Sameer Vohra said in a statement.

The New Mexico Department of Health said it would work with the state’s Board of Pharmacy to remove barriers and allow access to COVID vaccines at pharmacies across the state.

“It’s important for New Mexicans to know the New Mexico Department of Health is committed to keeping residents safe as we enter the 2025–2026 respiratory virus season,” Health Secretary Gina DeBlassie said in a statement. “This order will remove obstacles to vaccination access.”

Last month, public officials from eight Northeast states met in Rhode Island to discuss coordinating vaccine recommendations. The group included all the New England states except for New Hampshire, as well as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat who has been critical of federal cuts to public health funding and restrictions on vaccines, said her state was leading the bipartisan coalition.

“We’re going to make sure that people get the vaccines they need – no matter what the Trump Administration does,” she said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Public Health said Wednesday that cross-border meetings “are nothing new.”

“Public health challenges extend beyond state lines, making collaboration essential for effective response and prevention efforts,” the agency said in a statement. Last month’s meetings allowed the states to “share numerous public health best strategies to meet the needs of our states at a time of federal health restructuring and cuts.”

States have come together before

The West Coast Alliance isn’t the first time Democratic-led states have banded together to coordinate policies related to public health.

In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, states formed regional alliances to gain buying power for respirators, gloves and other personal protective equipment for front-line workers and to coordinate reopening their largely shuttered economies.

Governors in the Northeast and West Coast — all but one of them Democrats — announced separate regional groups in 2020 hours after Trump said on social media that it would be his decision when to “open up the states.”

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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

Martha Bellisle, The Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Scott Colom, a Democratic district attorney in Mississippi, is running for U.S. Senate, challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Colom announced his candidacy in a video Wednesday that criticized Hyde-Smith for voting for President Donald Trump’s ’ big beautiful bill ’, a sprawling piece of legislation that included Medicaid cuts, tax breaks and new money for national defense and deportations.

“Her last vote is going to run up our debt, kick over 100,000 Mississippians off their healthcare and put our hospitals at risk all so billionaires in California and New York can get a tax break,” Colom said of Hyde-Smith in his announcement video. “That’s not who I am.”

Colom also said he would fight to eliminate income taxes for teachers and law enforcement and boost wages for Mississippians.

Colom joins the race alongside U.S. Army Veteran Ty Pinkins, a former Democrat who announced he would be challenging Hyde-Smith as an Independent earlier this year.

“We welcome Scott Colom to the race and congratulate Senator Chuck Schumer and national Democrats on their recruit,” Nathan Calvert, the communications director for Hyde-Smith’s campaign, said in a statement. “Make no mistake — Mississippians know the difference between conservative values that work and the liberal Biden/Colom policies that have failed us.”

It is not the first time Colom and Hyde-Smith have clashed. In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked President Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom to a federal judgeship.

Hyde-Smith cited concerns about Colom’s connection to George Soros, a New York billionaire who gave money to Mississippi Safety and Justice, a political action committee that supported Colom’s 2015 race for district attorney. Soros did not contribute directly to Colom’s campaign.

In an attempt to sway Hyde-Smith, Colom wrote to her that he did not request the funds from Soros and did not know the money would be contributed to his campaign.

She also criticized Colom for opposing “legislation to protect female athletes,” after Colom signed a letter in June 2021 condemning efforts to criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender people.

Colom is running to flip a seat in a state where Republicans control all statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature. Democrats have attempted to gain a foothold in the state in recent years. In 2023, Democrat Brandon Presley was narrowly defeated in a gubernatorial election by Gov. Tate Reeves, who received nearly 51% of the vote.

Colom is the district attorney in Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties. He is the first Black prosecutor in those counties, defeating the longtime incumbent Forrest Allgood in 2015. Colom was unopposed when he won a second term in 2019.

Sophie Bates, The Associated Press

A judge has ruled that Utah lawmakers must proceed with redrawing the state’s congressional district map right away, pointing to Texas and California in rejecting their argument that the job can’t be done in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The ruling keeps Utah firmly among states where partisan redistricting battles stand to tilt the outcome of the next congressional election.

Utah lawmakers were wrong to disregard an independent commission’s map in drawing one that has been used for the 2022 and 2024 elections, Salt Lake County District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled Aug. 25.

The map did away with a district in the Salt Lake City area that has swung between Republicans and Democrats in favor of a map where four districts, each with a piece of the urban corridor, have been won by Republicans with wide margins.

On Tuesday, Gibson denied state lawmakers’ request to keep her ruling from taking effect, rejecting their argument that her one-month deadline to adopt a map that complies with voter-approved standards is too short.

“While the timelines here are short, redistricting has been accomplished under tighter timelines in other cases,” Gibson wrote in her ruling.

In Texas, she pointed out, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently approved a redistricting plan at President Donald Trump’s urging that will likely add five Republicans to the U.S. House. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has responded with an effort to add five Democratic districts to that state.

Missouri has meanwhile launched an effort to add Republican seats to Congress through gerrymandering, the longstanding practice of both parties to draw states’ congressional districts for partisan advantage.

Traditionally states redraw congressional districts once a decade based on the most recent census. Trump, however, has been encouraging Republican-led states to redraw maps at mid-decade to help Republicans’ chances in the 2026 congressional election.

Utah has an opportunity to be different, Gibson wrote in her ruling.

“While other states are currently redrawing their congressional plans to intentionally render some citizen votes meaningless, Utah could redesign its congressional plan with an intention to protect its citizens’ right to vote and to ensure that each citizen’s vote is meaningful,” the judge wrote.

In 2018, Utah voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative that created a commission to draw boundaries for Utah’s legislative and congressional districts.

Two years later, the state Legislature repealed the initiative and turned the commission into an advisory board they proceeded to ignore. The state Supreme Court rejected the law, ruling lawmakers have limited power to change laws passed by voters.

The state high court sent the case back to Gibson to rule on the Legislature’s map, which she rejected.

Republicans in the state criticized last week’s ruling as “judicial activism in action.”

“Using earlier flawed rulings to justify their opinions over the principles of our founding is a special kind of hubris,” Utah Republican Party Chairman Robert Axson posted on X.

The Utah Supreme Court is unlikely to reconsider an issue on which it just ruled last year, however. Lawmakers might now choose to cut their losses by creating a single left-leaning block, or gamble on creating competitive districts that Republicans would have to fight to keep.

The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, is likely to keep out of the fray. The high court ruled in 2019 that gerrymandering is outside the purview of federal courts and should be decided by states.

Mead Gruver, The Associated Press