The Art of Evading Regulation

Three industries that are trying to get away with it 

This week, Paramount Skydance reached a settlement with the states challenging its Warner Bros. merger, clearing the way for the further concentration of power in the media. Despite headlines boasting of an “independent editorial board” for CNN as part of the deal, the move leaves real power in the hands of ownership, threatening job loss and an even more deteriorated information ecosystem. 

Combating oligarchy requires transformational reform, not tweaks—and self-regulation cannot replace real democratic oversight of and accountability for corporations. 

Roosevelt Senior Fellow Graham Steele applies regulatory lessons from the financial crisis in a new blog post this week. He explains what policymakers must consider about the potential role of so-called self-regulatory organizations in the AI regulatory landscape.

• “Self-regulation can be a small part of a broader regulatory framework—not a substitute for it,” Steele writes, building on Roosevelt President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins’s argument last week that AI companies shouldn’t be left to govern themselves.

In another new blog post, Roosevelt’s Brad Lipton lays out the differences between state-level gambling regulations and the federal regulation that prediction market companies like Kalshi and Polymarket—which are effectively gambling platforms—would rather be subject to. 

• “While traditional state-level gambling regulations could be significantly improved,” Lipton writes, “they are nonetheless more robust than the decidedly minimal regulations that prediction market platforms and the Trump administration are seeking to apply—the federal regime that applies to [financial] swaps.”

Read the blog posts: 

• Financial Crises Teach Us That AI Self-Regulation Must Not Replace a Broader Regulatory Framework by Graham Steele
• How the Federal Rules for Prediction Markets Fall Short of State-Level Gambling Laws by Brad Lipton

And check out Roosevelt’s 2025 report on how corporate media concentration has eroded democracy: The Political Economy of the US Media System: Excavating the Roots of the Present Crisis by Bilal Baydoun, Shahrzad Shams, and Victor Pickard

What else we’re up to

• Join us in NYC to talk about AI governance that empowers workers and consumers. Sam Levine, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (and Roosevelt Network alum) will speak with tech writer Edward Ongweso Jr. and AI Now Co-Executive Director Amba Kak about how the city can regulate AI in service of an economy that works for working people.
  • Reserve a spot to join the New York City Policy Forum, CUNY School of Law W. Haywood Burns Program in Human & Civil Rights, Climate and Community Institute, and Roosevelt for the live discussion on Wednesday, September 30, at 3:30 pm.
• The Roosevelt Network’s Fall Policy Summit is here. Roosevelt Network members are exploring how city governments can better support workers, speaking with farmers about their economic needs, and fighting for academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights. Join us virtually this Friday at 12:00 pm ET to hear directly from Network students about this and other policy and organizing work. 
• Experts explain why tax reform is democratic reform. Roosevelt Fellow Samarth Gupta, Senior Fellow Brian Galle, and political scientist Nate Kelly came together last week to discuss how to use the tax code to reduce the mind-boggling level of inequality we see today—and why it’s a critical step toward building a truly democratic society. Watch the event recording here. 
• What to make of interest rate hikes. Last week, the Federal Reserve announced it is raising interest rates for the first time in more than three years. “It’s hard to see a lot of good options for the Fed in this environment,” Roosevelt Principal Economist Michael Madowitz said.
  • “Tighter policy is the clear answer today, but falling real wages are a clear sign this is borrowing-driven, not labor market–driven inflation. We’d be better off using more surgical policy tools than the interest rate sledgehammer to address these imbalances.” 

What we’re talking about