Good morning. An antitrust lawyer who was dismissed last month from the Justice Department accused senior officials of cutting deals with favored lobbyists and undermining the independence of antitrust enforcement.

• A corrupted process: Roger Alford, formerly the antitrust division’s second-in-command, on Monday said two senior aides to Attorney General Pam Bondi had corrupted the department’s typical law-enforcement process for dealing with antitrust lawsuits. The two senior officials were heavily involved in negotiating a proposed settlement in June that allowed Hewlett Packard Enterprise to acquire a competitor, Juniper Networks.
   
• Court intervention: Alford called on a federal court in San Jose, Calif., that is overseeing the Justice Department’s proposed resolution to “examine the surprising truth of what happened.” Federal courts have authority to look for any backroom dealings that could have influenced the settlement of a merger lawsuit.
   
• Block it: “I hope the court blocks the HPE/Juniper merger,” Alford said in a speech at the Technology Policy Institute in Aspen, Colo. “If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too.”

Newsmax settles Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $67 million.

Newsmax has agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over on-air claims that the voting-machine company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

The settlement allows the conservative cable network to avoid a high-stakes trial. Newsmax said in a securities filing that it would pay the $67 million in three installments over the current and next two fiscal years.

Dominion had sued Newsmax in 2021, accusing the network of airing misinformation from Trump surrogates who claimed voting-machine companies interfered with the election to sway the results for Joe Biden.

Union Pacific ordered to pay damages for retaliating against worker.

Federal regulators ordered Union Pacific to pay punitive damages of $150,000 to a worker who was fired after reporting a work-related injury.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in an Aug. 6 finding, called Union Pacific a “serial violator” of federal laws that protect workers who report safety incidents. The Omaha, Neb.-based railroad last month said it plans to acquire Norfolk Southern to form the country’s first transcontinental railroad. The merger requires approval from the federal Surface Transportation Board, which regulates economic issues in the freight-rail industry and will consider various goals including “fair working conditions for employees” in its review.

Trump plans to get Putin and Zelensky talking. That’s not even the hard part.

After months of effort and two grinding summits over four days, President Trump says an agreement between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine to directly negotiate a deal ending Moscow’s invasion is close at hand.

Now comes the hard part.

It would be no small feat to get Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a room together. But brokering a cease-fire—let alone a lasting peace that deters Russia from invading Ukraine again—will be an even greater diplomatic challenge than Trump has faced so far.

• The U.S. Treasury Department wants input on detecting the illicit use of stablecoins, reports Risk Journal's Richard Vanderford, as the Trump administration encourages the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies.
   
• Trump administration officials are discussing taking a 10% stake in Intel in a bid to revive the company’s fortunes and bolster semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., according to people briefed on the talks.
   
• European exports to the U.S. continue to slow sharply, underscoring the drag the continent’s trade faces from President Trump’s trade tariffs.
   
• Union leaders for Air Canada’s flight attendants said members would return to work after a deal was reached to end a strike that grounded hundreds of flights, hitting around 500,000 customers.

• Roaring cheers from supporters greeted Texas House Democrats as they returned to the Capitol midday Monday, after a two-week walkout. Their return all but ensures the passage of a Republican-backed redistricting plan sought by President Trump.
   
• MSNBC is changing its name in its spinoff from Comcast’s NBCUniversal. The left-leaning cable network will rebrand as My Source News Opinion World, or MS NOW, staffers were told on Monday.
   
• Niche researchers in a government-dependent education field are trying to pivot. ‘There are no crops coming out of this ground anymore.’
   
• Starbucks is giving corporate employees a 2% raise this year, moving away from merit-based increases at a time when the coffee chain is striving to control costs.

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