E38: Bestie brawl, Robinhood's $70M fine & S-1, Delta variant, future of the political parties, FTC takes losses against big tech & more

Available audience data show that the All-In podcast has grown substantially since 2021 but has not reached anything close to ~10 million weekly listeners, even by late 2025.

• A July 2025 Wall Street Journal profile, citing Podscribe data, reports that All-In averages about 750,000 downloads and YouTube views per episode across platforms. (wsj.com) With roughly weekly episodes, that implies on the order of hundreds of thousands—not tens of millions—of listeners per week.
• A detailed reference entry summarizing Podscan analytics estimates “more than 5 million monthly listeners” for the show, with frequent top rankings in the Technology category on major platforms. (leviathanencyclopedia.com) Even if all of those monthly listeners are distinct, that is still well below 10 million weekly listeners.
• A feature in The Information notes that the hosts have “multiplied their weekly audience on YouTube by an order of magnitude” and that the show “regularly attracts hundreds of thousands of listeners per episode across platforms,” but it does not claim anything near 10 million per week. (theinformation.com)

On the influence / distribution part of the prediction, mainstream coverage supports the idea that they now have direct distribution of their ideas to millions of people:

• The Washington Post describes candidates using All-In to reach “millions of listeners” and portrays the show as a key vehicle for tech and political messaging. (washingtonpost.com)
• A 2025 Vanity Fair profile calls the podcast a “kingmaker pulpit” for Silicon Valley elites and notes that their summit and show have “millions of their fans,” underscoring their ability to inject ideas directly into a large audience without traditional media gatekeepers. (vanityfair.com)

So, Chamath was directionally right that the show would become a powerful direct channel to millions of people. But the specific quantitative claim—growing from about 1 million weekly listeners to roughly 10 million weekly listeners—has clearly not materialized based on the best third‑party estimates available as of late 2025. For that reason, the prediction as stated is rated wrong.

Robinhood did successfully complete its IPO on July 29, 2021, but the valuation was far below the predicted $50–70 billion range.

Multiple contemporaneous reports show that Robinhood priced its IPO at $38 per share, giving it an initial valuation of about $32 billion based on its basic share count.

• CNBC: IPO priced at $38 per share, valuing Robinhood at about $32 billion. (cnbc.com)
• Nasdaq/CoinDesk: IPO priced at $38 per share, implying a valuation around $32 billion. (nasdaq.com)

Analyses that consider a fully diluted share count put the valuation somewhat higher, roughly $36–40 billion, but still well below $50 billion. (techcrunch.com)

Since the prediction was specifically that Robinhood would IPO at “like a 50, 60, $70 billion valuation,” and the actual IPO valuation was in the low-30s billions (or high-30s billions on a fully diluted basis), the predicted valuation range did not come true.

CDC modeling estimated about 120 million cumulative SARS‑CoV‑2 infections in the U.S. by May 2021 and about 150 million by September 2021, meaning roughly 30 million people (≈9% of the ~331 million population) were newly infected over that interval.(en.wikipedia.org) Genomic surveillance shows that Delta rose from about 1% of circulating viruses in early May 2021 to >95–99% by late July and remained at that level through early December 2021, so nearly all infections during the late‑summer and fall “Delta wave” were caused by Delta.(cdc.gov) Independent blood‑donor serosurveys also find that infection‑induced seroprevalence increased from about 20.2% in May 2021 to 28.8% in December 2021, implying roughly an 8–9 percentage‑point rise in the share of the population ever infected during the period when Delta was predominant.(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Taken together, these data suggest that on the order of 8–10% of the U.S. population was infected during the Delta wave, which fits within Friedberg’s stated ceiling of “up to ~10%,” so the prediction is broadly accurate (acknowledging some uncertainty in precisely attributing infections to Delta).

Key parts of the prediction diverged:

1. Five-day in-person instruction:

   • National data from the U.S. Department of Education’s NCES show that by fall 2021, almost all public schools were offering full-time in‑person instruction and about 99% of 4th- and 8th‑grade public school students were attending school full-time in person. (nces.ed.gov)
   • California’s own data in June 2021 reported that 99% of school districts planned to fully reopen for in-person instruction in fall 2021, and large districts like LAUSD and SFUSD explicitly announced five‑days‑a‑week, full‑day in‑person schedules for 2021–22. (gov.ca.gov)
   • So the literal claim that “we will not have five day a week in‑person learning” in many public schools, especially in California, did not come true.

2. Stringent mitigation measures (especially in California):

   • California’s K‑12 guidance for 2021–22 explicitly framed its goal as safe and full in-person instruction but required universal indoor masking for students and staff as a condition of that reopening, with enforcement protocols and quarantine/testing rules layered on top. (cdph.ca.gov)
   • CDC guidance at the same time recommended universal indoor masking for all K‑12 students and staff nationwide, regardless of vaccination status, to enable in‑person learning. (cdc.gov)
   • Many districts (e.g., SFUSD) reopened full‑time but with mandatory indoor masking, self‑screening, ventilation upgrades, and other COVID protocols—i.e., not “normal conditions” in the pre‑pandemic sense. (sfusd.edu)
   • Thus, the part of the prediction that said public schools that did open in person would impose strict measures like mandatory masking and other COVID safety protocols was broadly accurate.

3. Segregating unvaccinated children (e.g., separate tables):

   • There were documented cases of schools requiring unvaccinated students to eat separately or follow distinct lunch arrangements (for example, a Jesuit high school in Boston that required unvaccinated students to eat behind plexiglass and California schools with specialized protocols that had unvaccinated or younger students eat in separate outdoor areas). (lifesitenews.com)
   • These policies existed but appear to have been isolated or localized, not a standard practice across “many” U.S. public schools.

Why “ambiguous”:

• The quantifiable core of the prediction—that many U.S. public schools, especially in California, would not have five‑day in‑person instruction—was wrong, since the dominant reality in 2021–22 was full‑time in‑person schooling.
• However, the conditional framing in the normalized version (“either fall short of full-time in-person or impose stringent measures”) is partially satisfied, because many schools—particularly in California—did operate full-time but under exactly the kind of stringent mitigation he described (especially universal masking and other restrictions).
• Because the original quote leans strongly toward broad failure to restore five‑day in‑person learning, while the normalized paraphrase emphasizes the presence of strict conditions, and reality clearly supported one part but not the other, the overall accuracy is best characterized as mixed/ambiguous rather than cleanly right or wrong.

Evidence from mid‑2021 through 2023 shows elements of a two‑class system based on vaccination status in the U.S. and other countries, but this system was neither universal nor long‑lasting, and it largely faded as vaccines/boosters became widespread and Omicron infections surged.

Evidence that supports the prediction (at least temporarily):

• By late summer and fall 2021, many U.S. jurisdictions and private entities implemented rules that explicitly differentiated between vaccinated and unvaccinated people:
  • New York City’s “Key to NYC” program required proof of vaccination for indoor dining, gyms, and entertainment venues, effectively creating separate access rules for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals.
  • Various employers, hospitals, universities, and federal contractors imposed vaccine mandates, with unvaccinated workers sometimes barred from the workplace or subject to stricter testing/masking requirements.
  • International travel rules often allowed vaccinated travelers to enter with fewer testing or quarantine requirements, while unvaccinated travelers faced more restrictions.
• These policies match the structure of what Jason described: vaccinated people having one set of rules, and unvaccinated people another, more restrictive set.

Evidence that cuts against the prediction as an enduring “near‑future” equilibrium:

• Many of the most visible vaccine‑differentiated policies were rolled back during 2022–2023 as:
  • Omicron and later variants led to widespread breakthrough infections, reducing the justification for sharply different rules.
  • Political and legal pushback mounted, and courts sometimes limited federal or state-level mandates.
  • Public health authorities shifted away from hard vaccine mandates toward broader guidance (e.g., CDC’s August 2022 guidance dropped different recommendations based solely on vaccination status for many settings).
• By late 2023–2025 in most of the U.S., daily life (restaurants, events, transit, workplaces) generally no longer operates with formal, routine rule sets that differ by vaccination status. Requirements now tend to hinge on setting (e.g., health‑care, high‑risk facilities) or general community transmission levels, not a pervasive two‑track system in ordinary public life.

Why the outcome is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong:

• Jason’s statement referred to “the near future”; in that near‑term window (roughly late 2021 into part of 2022), many places did move toward policies that functioned as a two‑class system based on vaccination.
• However, those differentiated rules were not stable or uniform across the whole society, and they were substantially rolled back within a couple of years. Today, you can’t accurately say that U.S. or global COVID policy is defined by an enduring, generalized two‑class system between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
• Because the prediction doesn’t specify duration, geographic scope, or how entrenched the system would be, it’s possible to interpret it as largely correct for a time (short‑run policy response) or ultimately wrong as a description of the stable, ongoing order.

Given that both interpretations are reasonable and the prediction’s terms are somewhat vague, the fairest assessment is ambiguous rather than cleanly “right” or “wrong.”

Evidence from fall 2021 shows that the SARS‑CoV‑2 Delta variant did in fact sweep through under‑vaccinated parts of the United States and became the dominant strain there.

Key points:

• By early July 2021, Delta was already surging in regions with low vaccination coverage, especially in parts of the South and Midwest, and health officials explicitly warned that areas with low vaccination rates would be hit hardest.
• Through late summer and into fall 2021, the U.S. experienced a major “Delta wave,” with the highest case, hospitalization, and death rates concentrated in states and counties with lower vaccination rates (e.g., many parts of the Southeast and Mountain West). Analyses during that period consistently highlighted a strong geographic correlation between low vaccination uptake and intense Delta transmission.
• By September–October 2021, Delta was the predominant variant in the U.S., and data and reporting showed it driving significant outbreaks specifically in under‑vaccinated communities, matching the prediction that it would “sweep through areas of the country in the fall that aren’t vaccinated.”

Because the prediction is specific (Delta will sweep through under‑vaccinated areas in fall 2021) and that is exactly what occurred, the prediction is right.

Friedberg argued that despite Delta’s infectiousness, existing U.S. immunity meant the Delta wave would not crush the hospital system or cause a massive number of deaths.

What actually happened in the U.S. during the Delta-dominant period (roughly July–November 2021) conflicts with both parts of that claim:

• Deaths during the Delta wave were very large. KFF/CDC data show 604,656 cumulative U.S. COVID deaths by June 30, 2021, just before Delta took off. (healthsystemtracker.org) By August 25 that had risen to 630,868, and the tracker notes deaths climbing again as Delta spread. (healthsystemtracker.org) The U.S. then passed 700,000 deaths on October 1 and 746,000 by November 1. (en.wikipedia.org) A Washington Post analysis of the pandemic’s first two years highlights that in just September and October 2021, around the Delta peak, COVID killed more than 100,000 Americans. (washingtonpost.com) These figures are widely described by public-health and media sources as a ‘colossal tragedy’ and mark COVID surpassing the 1918 flu in U.S. deaths, which strongly contradicts the idea that Delta would not cause a ‘massive amount of fatalities’. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Hospitals were heavily strained, with regional breakdowns. During the Delta surge, U.S. COVID hospitalizations climbed back above 100,000 in late August, with HHS data showing about 103,000 hospitalized patients at the early-September peak — levels comparable to the worst earlier surge. (cnbc.com) The Guardian reported that more than 100,000 inpatient beds were occupied by COVID patients and described this as underscoring the ‘devastating’ Delta surge. (theguardian.com) The CDC and other summaries characterize July–September 2021 as a hospital crisis period, with routine care and COVID care colliding. (en.wikipedia.org) In Idaho, for example, the health department formally activated statewide crisis standards of care in mid-September 2021 because a ‘massive increase’ in COVID hospitalizations had exhausted resources and left hospitals unable to provide normal standards of care — effectively a local system collapse. (healthandwelfare.idaho.gov)

While the national hospital system did not completely collapse everywhere at once, Delta clearly produced severe, documented hospital crises in multiple states and caused well over 100,000 U.S. deaths in just a couple of months. Under any ordinary reading, that counts as both major hospital strain and a massive number of fatalities, so the prediction did not hold up.

Evidence from multiple sources shows that the Delta variant did, in fact, surge in the U.S. in late summer and fall 2021, and that the worst impacts were concentrated in regions with low vaccination rates.

Key points:

1. Timing and geography of the Delta wave

   • CDC data and contemporaneous reporting show that the Delta variant drove a major U.S. COVID‑19 surge starting in July 2021 and extending into the fall, with substantial case waves in many states.
   • Southern and some Midwestern states—such as Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and later parts of the Mountain West—experienced particularly severe waves during late summer and into fall 2021.

2. Correlation with low vaccination rates

   • Throughout mid‑2021, those same states had below‑average vaccination coverage compared to the national mean. Public health analyses done at the time repeatedly highlighted that Delta surges were worst in areas with lower vaccination rates (often rural counties and states with lower overall uptake).
   • News and CDC commentary emphasized that Delta was "ripping through" or "sweeping through" under‑vaccinated communities, matching the gist of the prediction (rapid spread in low‑vax regions in that timeframe).

3. Match to the prediction

   • Prediction: “In fall 2021, the Delta variant … will sweep through areas of the country that aren’t vaccinated.”
   • Outcome: By fall 2021, Delta had already driven large case waves in precisely such areas, and continued to circulate heavily there during that period. The direction, timing (late summer/fall 2021), and conditional factor (low vaccination) all align.

Given that Delta did cause a substantial wave concentrated in under‑vaccinated U.S. regions during late summer and fall 2021, this prediction is best classified as right.

The New York criminal case over the Trump Organization’s fringe‑benefits tax scheme (the “tax‑perk” case) indicted only three defendants in July 2021: the Trump Corporation, Trump Payroll Corporation, and Allen Weisselberg—not Donald Trump personally. 【2†cite†2search13】 Prosecutors alleged Weisselberg received about $1.76 million in untaxed perks such as free rent, car leases, and private‑school tuition. 【2†cite†2search13】

In August 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felonies and agreed to testify against the Trump Organization as part of a plea deal. The two Trump entities were then convicted on all 17 counts in December 2022, and Weisselberg was sentenced in accordance with that cooperation agreement. 【2†cite†2search13】【1†cite†1search3】

However, contemporaneous reporting and later analysis make clear that prosecutors did not succeed in flipping Weisselberg into a cooperator who substantially implicated Donald Trump personally. The New York case history notes that prosecutors had hoped he would provide testimony against Trump but that he refused, heavily invoking the Fifth Amendment. 【2†cite†2search13】 A later overview of the Trump prosecutions similarly concludes that, although Weisselberg pled guilty and served time, he "never provided bombshell cooperation implicating Trump" himself. 【2†cite†2news11】

Crucially, Donald Trump was never charged as a defendant in the fringe‑benefits tax case (People v. Trump Corporation). His separate New York criminal prosecution and 2024 conviction involve a different matter entirely: falsifying business records in connection with 2016 hush‑money payments, not the earlier fringe‑benefits scheme. 【1†cite†1search13】【1†cite†1search18】

Because Weisselberg’s cooperation did not lead to criminal charges against Donald Trump personally in the tax‑perk case, and Trump incurred no criminal liability arising from that specific New York prosecution, Sacks’s prediction matches the eventual outcome.

The prediction has two parts: (1) Biden would be a one‑term president; (2) he would not run for re‑election in 2024.

1. One‑term president – correct part
   Joe Biden served a single term from January 20, 2021, and left office when Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org)
   So the “one‑term president” portion of the prediction is accurate.

2. Not running for re‑election – incorrect part
   Biden did run for re‑election. On April 25, 2023, he formally announced that he would seek a second term in 2024 with Kamala Harris as his running mate and went on to secure an overwhelming majority of delegates in the Democratic primaries, becoming the presumptive nominee. (en.wikipedia.org)
   He only withdrew from the race later, on July 21, 2024, under party pressure, endorsing Harris to replace him on the ticket. (cnbc.com)

Because the normalized prediction claims both that he would serve only one term and that he would not run for re‑election, and the second claim is clearly false, the overall prediction is best judged wrong, albeit with the caveat that it was half‑right on the one‑term outcome.

Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election and was elected to a second, nonconsecutive term, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. (en.wikipedia.org) He was then inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025, officially beginning his second term in office. (en.wikipedia.org) Because he has returned to the White House and is no longer a one‑term president, Chamath’s prediction that Trump would remain a one‑term president and never again serve a subsequent term is incorrect.

The prediction was conditional: if Nikki Haley ran for president as a Republican in 2024, she would be a serious contender with real credibility.

Haley did in fact run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, announcing her campaign in February 2023. (en.wikipedia.org) During the primaries she became the last remaining major challenger to Donald Trump, widely described as the “last, best Republican alternative” and effectively the only non-Trump option once other major candidates dropped out. (thedailybeast.com) She won the District of Columbia and Vermont primaries—becoming the first woman ever to win a Republican presidential primary—and ultimately amassed millions of votes and dozens of delegates to the Republican National Convention. (en.wikipedia.org)

Contemporaneous coverage and analysts repeatedly treated her as a serious, credible contender: e.g., New Hampshire analysis framing her as the anti‑Trump movement’s best hope and a potentially “serious contender against Trump,” and post‑Super‑Tuesday reporting calling her “the first serious contender against Trump in the Republican primaries.” (aljazeera.com) While some rivals (such as Chris Christie) publicly argued she was not a serious contender, that was a minority framing and itself confirms that her seriousness was an active point of debate in the race. (washingtonexaminer.com) Given that she ran, lasted as Trump’s only significant opponent, secured primary victories and substantial donor and media attention, Chamath’s claim that she would be a serious, credible contender if she ran is best judged as having come true.

Evidence from both polling averages and retrospective coverage indicates that Donald Trump, not Ron DeSantis, was regarded as the early frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

• The 2024 U.S. election overview explicitly states that Trump "was considered an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination," while describing DeSantis only as Trump’s main challenger, not the frontrunner. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Nationwide primary polls in late 2022 and early 2023 generally showed Trump leading DeSantis in multi‑candidate GOP primary ballots (e.g., many January 2023 polls have Trump in the mid‑40s to around 50% and DeSantis mostly in the high‑20s to low‑30s), indicating Trump held frontrunner status in the actual nomination field. (en.wikipedia.org)
• DeSantis did outperform Trump in some head‑to‑head hypothetical matchups in late 2022 and early 2023, and some commentary framed him as a potential or early favorite, but this never translated into a sustained lead as the primary’s de facto frontrunner. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw polls from 2021–2023 consistently had Trump well ahead of DeSantis among activists (e.g., Trump 59–70% vs. DeSantis ~20–28%), reinforcing Trump’s status as the party’s leading figure. (en.wikipedia.org)
• By mid‑2023, FiveThirtyEight’s national GOP primary polling average had Trump at about 52% and DeSantis at 15%, and when DeSantis suspended his campaign in January 2024, NPR and other outlets referred to Trump as “the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination,” while describing DeSantis only as an early favorite who failed to capitalize. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the broad polling data and contemporary characterizations consistently identify Trump—not DeSantis—as the early frontrunner in the 2024 GOP nomination race, the prediction that DeSantis would be "definitely the early frontrunner" did not come true.

Ron DeSantis did in fact win re‑election as governor of Florida in 2022, defeating Democratic nominee Charlie Crist with 59.37% of the vote to Crist’s 39.97%, a margin of about 19.4 percentage points. (en.wikipedia.org)

Multiple analyses, including election summaries and news coverage, explicitly describe this as a landslide and note it was the largest margin in a Florida gubernatorial race since 1982 and the largest for a Republican in state history, with DeSantis flipping traditionally Democratic counties such as Miami‑Dade and Palm Beach. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given the prediction that he would "sweep to victory" and win re‑election in 2022 by a large margin, and the actual nearly 20‑point landslide, this prediction was clearly borne out by the 2022 election results.

The condition of the prediction clearly occurred, but the forecasted consequence did not.

1. Condition was met:

   • Ron DeSantis won re‑election as Florida governor in 2022 in a landslide, taking about 59.4% to 40.0% over Charlie Crist, a margin of roughly 19.4 points, the largest for a Republican governor in modern Florida history. (en.wikipedia.org) This satisfies Sacks’s “wins re‑election in 2022 by a strong margin” condition.

2. What actually happened to 2024 GOP frontrunner status:

   • After the midterms, Donald Trump announced his 2024 candidacy and was “considered an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.” (en.wikipedia.org)
   • While DeSantis was initially viewed as the main challenger and even had more favorable polling numbers than Trump by the end of 2022, Trump quickly re‑established and widened a dominant lead; by July 2023 FiveThirtyEight’s national GOP primary average had Trump at 52% and DeSantis at 15%. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • FiveThirtyEight’s launch analysis of its GOP primary polling average in April 2023 explicitly stated that the averages implied Trump was favored to win the nomination, with Trump at about 49% to DeSantis’s 26%. (fivethirtyeight.com)
   • Media and institutional language consistently referred to Trump, not DeSantis, as the “frontrunner” during the primary season; for example, coverage of DeSantis suspending his campaign in January 2024 describes him endorsing “frontrunner Donald Trump” for the GOP nomination. (news.wjct.org)
   • DeSantis ultimately suspended his 2024 campaign on January 21, 2024 and endorsed Trump, finishing with only nine delegates, confirming that he never displaced Trump as the de facto leader of the race. (en.wikipedia.org)

3. Why this makes the prediction wrong, not just early or ambiguous:

   • Sacks’s claim was conditional but specific: if DeSantis won big in 2022, he would “become the putative frontrunner for 2024.” The condition (big win) happened, but DeSantis never became the commonly-recognized or data-backed frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination.
   • He was widely seen as the top alternative and “future of the party” — e.g., the New York Post’s “DeFuture” cover and reporting that his win made him a potential GOP frontrunner (theguardian.com) — but the polling averages, party behavior, and press framing all treated Trump as the frontrunner throughout the key period.

Because the trigger condition occurred but DeSantis never actually became the de facto or “putative” frontrunner in practice, the prediction is best classified as wrong.

Evidence shows that Amazon’s 2021 petition to recuse FTC Chair Lina Khan from Amazon matters did not succeed and that she continued to oversee Amazon‑related cases, matching Sacks’s prediction.

• Amazon formally petitioned the FTC in June/July 2021 to have Khan recused from any antitrust investigations or proceedings involving Amazon. (retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com)
• A subsequent letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others argued there was no basis for Khan’s recusal under federal ethics law and FTC precedent, reinforcing that she should remain on Amazon matters. (warren.senate.gov)
• Reporting on the later FTC Prime lawsuit notes explicitly that Amazon “tried and failed” to have Khan recused from regulating the company in 2021, indicating the recusal effort did not remove her. (washingtonpost.com)
• In 2023, the FTC—with Khan as Chair and publicly speaking for the agency—filed a major consumer‑protection suit accusing Amazon of using dark patterns to push Prime subscriptions, with the FTC’s own release quoting Khan criticizing Amazon’s conduct. (ftc.gov)
• Also in 2023, the FTC and 17 states brought a landmark antitrust suit against Amazon for allegedly maintaining monopoly power, again with Khan personally announcing and explaining the case as FTC Chair. (ftc.gov)

Taken together, these sources show Amazon’s recusal petition did not result in Khan stepping aside; she remained involved in key Amazon enforcement actions. That matches the prediction that “there’s no way she’s going to get recused,” so the forecast is right.

Sacks was talking about the six‑bill House Judiciary 'Big Tech' antitrust package (H.R. 3816, 3825, 3826, 3843, 3849, 3460) that cleared committee in June 2021 to rein in large online platforms such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. (ballardspahr.com)

During the 117th Congress (2021–2022), two of those six bills did in fact pass the Senate and become law:

• The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act (H.R. 3843) was passed by the House and then enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, signed on December 29, 2022. (congress.gov)
• The State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act (H.R. 3460) likewise passed the Senate (June 14, 2022) and was incorporated into the same omnibus spending law. (en.wikipedia.org)

These provisions substantially raised Hart‑Scott‑Rodino merger filing fees for large deals (up to $2.25 million, with an estimated $1.4 billion in extra funding over five years) and made it harder for dominant firms, including major tech platforms, to shift or consolidate state antitrust suits into more favorable venues—changes widely described as important, if modest, strengthening of antitrust enforcement against Big Tech. (mintz.com)

The other four bills in the package—including the platform‑specific American Innovation and Choice Online Act and Ending Platform Monopolies Act—never received final floor passage and expired at the end of the Congress. (congress.gov)

So while the eventual reforms were narrower than a full rewrite of platform conduct rules, Sacks’ core prediction that at least some of the package would clear the Senate during that Congress and produce meaningful new antitrust constraints relevant to Big Tech was borne out.