Get your popcorn ready: The Tipline for 17 September 2019

The heads of the squabbling US antitrust agencies head to Capitol Hill today to testify before a subcommittee chair that believes only one of the two agencies is needed for civil enforcement. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Federal Trade Commission chair Joseph Simons sent the Department of Justice a letter last week complaining about Antitrust Division’s behaviour. All of this comes following the DOJ’s intervention in the FTC’s Qualcomm lawsuit, and amid an expanding turf war over merger clearance agreements and what is likely the agencies’ highest-profile probes in decades. What better way to settle things than by sitting Simons and Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim side-by-side as part of a highly public family therapy session?