Can Antitrust Enforcement Restore Competition?
Inflation isn’t the only reason grocery shopping feels different today. Across the country, mergers have left fewer companies controlling more and more of the food industry, changing everything from the price of eggs to worker wages. Max Burns looks at how consolidation transformed America’s grocery business, why critics say consumers are paying the price, and what the debate over what meaningful change could look like.
America’s Grocery Monopoly Problem
If it feels to you like American consumers have fewer choices than ever before, your mind isn’t playing tricks on you. Federal regulators are approving corporate mega-mergers at the fastest rate since the 1980s. Consumers are feeling those industry-spanning consolidations everywhere, as hardly a sector of American life has escaped Wall Street’s goal of building the largest and most powerful corporate conglomerates in world history.
Democrats have been quick to criticize some of the nation’s biggest mergers as anti-worker and anti-consumer, but one critical sector of the U.S. economy has managed to escape widespread public criticism: grocery stores.
From the Reporter’s Notebook 📓
This story began as a look at how industries across America have consolidated in ways that hurt consumers. But as I interviewed sources, I kept hearing the same thing: Look at the grocery stores. What I found was a shocking trend of mega-mergers, price fixing and anticompetitive behavior that has been met with silence at the national level from Democrats and Republicans alike. I wanted to figure out why.
Next Up in the Series: Immigration Reform
America’s immigration system wasn’t designed all at once—it was built piece by piece over more than a century, leaving behind a maze of contradictions that shape who can come, who can stay, and who gets left in limbo. Next week, Felipe De La Hoz explores why fixing immigration may require more than better enforcement. It may require rethinking the system from the ground up.
Read More From the Series
What If American Power Is the Problem?
Rising global skepticism and domestic fatigue are converging around a single question: What should U.S. power be wielded for?
Read the full feature from Van Jackson here.
The Climate Fight That Doesn’t Depend on Washington
Washington may be retreating from climate action, but communities across the country are building a movement that doesn't depend on who's in the White House.
Sarah Sloat reports here.
The Tax Code America Needs for the Next 250 Years
The history of taxation reveals how the nation has defined belonging—and how a fairer system could help repair the fractures of American democracy.
Read the full reporting from Portia Allen-Kyle here.
The Post-Trump Challenge Isn’t Restoration. It’s Reinvention.
Experts warn the federal government has lost generations of institutional knowledge under the latest Trump administration. They also believe the destruction could force long-overdue structural reforms.
Read the full piece from Max Burns here.
The Case for Rebuilding America’s Immigration System
With public anger mounting over aggressive raids and deaths in detention, immigration reform advocates are advancing a broader agenda aimed at limiting detention, strengthening oversight, and reducing the federal government’s enforcement powers.
Read Felipe De La Hoz’s reporting here.
The Blueprint for a More Affordable America Already Exists
From guaranteed income to universal childcare, solutions to the affordability crisis are already in motion. The challenge now is political will—not policy design.
Rainesford Stauffer reports.