The Federal Trade Commission and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Thursday, saying they are forcing consumers to pay more to see live events through a variety of illegal tactics.
The FTC said Live Nation and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, have deceived artists and consumers by advertising lower ticket prices than what consumers must pay and falsely claiming to impose strict limits on the number of tickets consumers can buy for an event.
In reality, the FTC said, Ticketmaster coordinates with ticket brokers who bypass those ticket limits. The FTC said brokers use fake accounts to buy up millions of dollars worth of tickets and then sell them at a substantial markup on Ticketmaster’s platform. Ticketmaster benefits from the additional fees it collects from those sales, the FTC said.
The Associated Press left messages seeking comment Thursday with Beverly Hills, California-based Live Nation Entertainment.
Related Articles
Amazon pledged to support affordable housing. How has it fared so far?
Target debuts thousands of holiday gifts, plus weekly sales and faster delivery
Gen Z leads biggest drop in FICO scores since financial crisis
They bought a house to ‘grow up.’ Now they can’t afford to start a family.
Organic food prices could soar as US imposes import restrictions and new tariffs on specialty sugar
Ticketmaster controls 80% or more of major U.S. concert venues’ primary ticketing, according to the FTC. Consumers spent more than $82.6 billion buying tickets from Ticketmaster between 2019 and 2024, the agency added.
“American live entertainment is the best in the world and should be accessible to all of us. It should not cost an arm and a leg to take the family to a baseball game or attend your favorite musician’s show,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Joining the lawsuit were the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
Ticketmaster has been in lawmakers’ sights since 2022, when it spectacularly botched ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The company’s site was overwhelmed by fans and attacks from brokers’ bots, which were scooping up tickets to sell on secondary sites. Senators grilled Live Nation in a 2023 hearing.
But reform in the industry has been slow. The Biden administration took action with a ban on junk fees, requiring Ticketmaster to display the full price of a ticket as soon as consumers begin shopping. That rule went into effect in May.
President Donald Trump has also taken aim at the industry. In March, with Kid Rock by his side in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. officials to ensure ticket resellers are complying with Internal Revenue Service rules. The order also directed the FTC to “take enforcement action to prevent unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct in the secondary ticketing market.”
In August, the FTC sued Maryland-based ticket broker Key Investment Group use, alleging it has used thousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts and other methods to buy tickets for events, including Swift’s tour.
Muhammad Ali’s refusal to sign his Vietnam-era military draft card upended the boxing champ’s life and added a powerful voice to the anti-war movement. Now that piece of history is coming up for sale.
There’s a blank line on the card where Ali was supposed to sign in 1967 but refused to do so — a polarizing act of defiance as the Vietnam War raged on. It triggered a chain of events that disrupted his storied boxing career but immortalized him outside the ring as a champion for peace and social justice.
“Being reminded of my father’s message of courage and conviction is more important now than ever, and the sale of his draft card at Christie’s is a powerful way to share that legacy with the world,” Rasheda Ali Walsh, a daughter of Ali, said Thursday in a statement issued by the auction house.
This image provided by Christie’s Auction House shows Muhammad Ali’s draft card. (Christie’s Auction House via AP)
The auction house said it will hold the online sale Oct. 10-28, adding the card came to it via descendants of Ali. A public display of the card began Thursday at Rockefeller Center in New York and will continue until Oct. 21. The document could fetch $3 million to $5 million, Christie’s estimated.
“This is a singular object associated with an important historical event that looms large in our shared popular culture,” said Peter Klarnet, a Christie’s senior specialist.
Ali, the three-time heavyweight boxing champion, died in 2016 at age 74 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. An estimated 100,000 people chanting, “Ali! Ali!” lined the streets of his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, as a hearse carried his casket to a local cemetery. His memorial service was packed with celebrities, athletes and politicians.
The draft card, typewritten in parts, conjures memories from when Ali wasn’t universally beloved but instead stood as a polarizing figure, revered by millions worldwide and reviled by many.
For refusing induction into the U.S. Army, Ali was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his boxing title and banned from boxing. Ali appealed the conviction on grounds he was a Muslim minister. He famously proclaimed: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
Related Articles
Amazon pledged to support affordable housing. How has it fared so far?
Why are more older people dying after falls?
An immigration judge ordered Mahmoud Khalil deported. What happens now?
Target debuts thousands of holiday gifts, plus weekly sales and faster delivery
Reactions pour in about ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show
During his banishment, Ali spoke at colleges and briefly appeared in a Broadway musical. He was allowed to resume boxing three years later.
He was still facing a possible prison sentence when in 1971 he fought Joe Frazier, his archrival, for the first time in what was labeled “The Fight of the Century.” A few months later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on an 8-0 vote.
The draft card was issued the day the draft board in Louisville ordered Ali to appear for induction, Christie’s said Thursday in a news release. The card was signed by the local draft board chairman but pointedly not by Ali.
The card identified him by his birth name — Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. — but misspelled his given middle name. Upon his conversion to Islam, he was given a name reflecting his faith, the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville says on its website. Meanwhile, the top of the draft card reads: “(AKA) Muhammad Ali.”
The Ali Center features exhibits paying tribute to Ali’s immense boxing skills. But its main mission, it says, is to preserve his humanitarian legacy and promote his six core principles: spirituality, giving, conviction, confidence, respect and dedication.
Now an artifact reflecting how Ali personified some of those principles will be up for auction.
“This is the first time collectors will be able to acquire a vital and intimate document connected to one of the most important figures of the last century,” Klarnet said Thursday.
Devon Price, a 15-year-old boy with autism, has attended the largest school district in North Carolina for 10 years, but he cannot read or write. His twin sister, Danielle, who is also autistic, was bullied by classmates and became suicidal.
Under federal law, public schools must provide children with disabilities a “free appropriate public education,” to give them the same opportunity to learn as other kids.
The twins’ mother, Emma Miller, and tens of thousands of other parents in the U.S. have elevated complaints to the Education Department alleging that schools and states have ignored mistreatment of their children. Those complaints are in limbo as President Donald Trump’s administration has set about dismantling the federal agency.
Trump once mocked a reporter with a disability. Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s inaccurate remarks about people with autism were criticized as perpetuating offensive stereotypes.
Now people like Miller are worried their children will be left behind.
“I want justice for my twins, and to sound the alarm so other special needs children are not suffering or being deprived,” said Miller, 53, who lives with her twins in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Emma Miller’ s teenage twins, Devon and Danielle Price, have autism. Miller says both children are high-functioning and verbal. She says she believes they could have thrived academically if the school system in North Carolina’ s Wake County had provided them proper services. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
Devon Price points to a design he created for the Beyblade toys he collects. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
Emma Miller of Wake Forest, North Carolina, is among tens of thousands of U.S. parents who have filed complaints with the federal Education Department alleging that schools sometimes mistreat children with disabilities and are breaking the law. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
1 of 3
Emma Miller’ s teenage twins, Devon and Danielle Price, have autism. Miller says both children are high-functioning and verbal. She says she believes they could have thrived academically if the school system in North Carolina’ s Wake County had provided them proper services. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
The Education Department, which was created in 1979 and helps oversee schools and colleges in the U.S., has the authority to protect students from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or disability. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates allegations at schools and negotiates corrective actions.
As the school year begins, families throughout the country are unsure what authority will be left to intervene on their behalf if the office is shuttered, said Hannah Russell, an advocate who works with parents in North Carolina trying to obtain educational services for their children with disabilities.
“Without the Department of Education there is no accountability,” said Russell, a former special education teacher. “Everybody is scared.”
Miller described her twins as her “miracle babies” who survived despite each weighing 1 pound at birth. Danielle Price spent the first five months of her life in a neonatal intensive care unit, and her brother, Devon, the first seven months.
She has spent years fighting for them, repeatedly taking on local and state school officials. But even when she notched victories, she said, her children did not get the help they were promised.
Miller said her children are high-functioning and verbal. She said they could have thrived academically if the school system had given them proper services.
“My children have suffered,” Miller wrote in a complaint she filed in September 2024. “The most vulnerable group of children [is] being denied a basic education.”
‘Unusual and Unprecedented’
Miller says her daughter began to self-harm after classmates teased and tormented her and staff secluded her away from her bullies. The Wake County Public School System assigned Devon to a classroom with an instructional assistant who was not a licensed teacher, a violation of policy, according to state documents.
Last year, Miller filed a complaint against Wake County schools with the federal Office for Civil Rights. She alleged the district did not reevaluate her kids to determine their special education needs, did not respond for months to her records requests, and retaliated against her by wrongly withdrawing the twins from the school district.
Wake County schools violated policy when staff did not address the effects of bullying on Danielle, says an April 2024 letter from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Related Articles
Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina a year ago. Some students never returned to school
A law enforcement surge has taken a toll on children of immigrants in Washington schools
Oklahoma court stops social studies standards with 2020 election misinformation from taking effect
Private school for Native Hawaiians vows to defend admissions policy from conservative strategist
MN Attorney General reaches $220,000 settlement in Hmong College Prep funds suit
The school system’s education plan for Danielle “was not appropriate considering the student’s unmet social-emotional needs, which resulted in the student’s increased anxiety,” the letter says.
State officials concluded in June 2024 that the school system failed to develop, review, and revise an education plan for Devon, assigned him to a teacher assistant instead of a licensed teacher, and did not provide technology that could help him learn, according to documents.
While the decisions validated Miller’s concerns, she said that the district continues to violate her children’s rights and that the state is now ignoring her pleas for help.
“No one is taking responsibility,” she told KFF Health News. “It has been a nightmare.”
But after she appealed to the federal government last year, the Education Department sent her a letter in March saying it would not look into the complaint.
For decades, parents and advocates for people with disabilities have said the system makes it difficult for them to win against school districts, because the process is often time-consuming, confusing, and, if a family hires a lawyer, expensive. Now they say families could soon face even bigger hurdles.
On March 11, the day the Education Department sent Miller’s denial letter, the agency announced it was firing nearly half its 4,133 employees. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the move was “a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
Officials shuttered seven of the 12 regional offices of the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, leaving a skeleton staff to investigate thousands of complaints filed each year, according to attorneys and advocates for the disabled.
Trump, acting on a campaign promise to shrink the federal government, later signed an executive order to eliminate the Education Department, which he said had failed children and built a bloated bureaucracy.
The president instructed officials to “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Parents and advocacy groups say that would allow local authorities to police themselves at a time when schools remain racially segregated, some selective colleges accept male applicants at higher rates than female applicants, and students with disabilities are struggling to recover academically from the covid pandemic, more so than their peers. Also, they note, the federal laws protecting disabled and disadvantaged children emerged because of state-level failures.
Under North Carolina law, children with disabilities should be reevaluated by schools every three years to help determine their individual needs. But Miller said Wake County officials for nearly a decade refused her requests to have her kids reevaluated. She said it finally happened in late 2024.
“I never expected getting an education for my children would be such a problem,” Miller said.
The Education Law Center, the NAACP, and other advocacy groups have sued to stop Trump’s plans, alleging the changes are illegal and pose a threat to the education of students from vulnerable groups. Some 20 states and the District of Columbia sued to halt the plan, but the Supreme Court ruled in July that the Trump administration could move ahead while the case proceeded through the courts.
Russell said she has heard North Carolina school districts are promising to provide accommodations for students with disabilities, such as extra time on tests.
But families who cannot afford to hire an attorney could find themselves at a disadvantage when disagreements arise over services that cost districts more money, Russell said.
The Trump administration has decimated the Office for Civil Rights’ ability to properly investigate a backlog of thousands of complaints, said Robert Kim, who leads the Education Law Center.
The office reported receiving nearly 23,000 complaints in fiscal 2024, the highest number ever. About 8,400, or 37%, involved allegations of disability discrimination.
Black children and those with disabilities may suffer the worst consequences, since they disproportionately face harsh discipline at school, including physical restraint and isolation in seclusion rooms, Kim said.
The Education Department says children with disabilities make up 14% of students but 75% of those secluded and 81% of those physically restrained.
Black children constitute about 15% of students but 42% of those who are mechanically restrained using a device or equipment.
“Something unusual and unprecedented is happening,” Kim said about what he sees as a shift in the federal government’s responsibility to keep children safe and provide a high-quality education.
The Education Department’s press office declined an interview request for this story in an unsigned email that was copied to agency officials Madison Biedermann, Savannah Newhouse, Julie Hartman, and Ellen Keast.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to a request for comment.
In a July statement, McMahon said her agency is performing all of its duties: “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most — to students, parents, and teachers.”
‘Nothing but Problems’
Danielle and Devon Price entered 10th grade at Wake Forest High School in August. Their mother said she is uncertain what will happen to them.
Danielle wants to go to college, but her math skills are at a fourth-grade level, school records show.
Like many youths with autism, Danielle struggles with changes in routine, and her mother said she became despondent when school officials repeatedly changed her classes to keep her away from a boy who bullied her. Soon after that, Danielle started to self-harm, Miller said, adding that her daughter receives intensive therapy.
“It has been nothing but problems” with Wake County schools, she said. “It is like no one cares.”
Wake County school officials declined to answer questions about Miller’s complaints, citing privacy laws.
In a written statement, district spokesperson Matthew Dees said that “the school district has worked hard to reach agreement with Ms. Miller on many issues” and remedied complaints that were substantiated.
“The district disputes the remaining allegations in the various complaints she has raised, including the many accusations against various staff,” Dees added.
Under federal law, parents have 180 days from the time of the last alleged violation to file a complaint with the Education Department. Miller submitted her complaint Sept. 12, 2024, exactly 180 days after she says her twins were last denied a “free appropriate public education.”
But the Office for Civil Rights said that was too late. Officials declined to waive the time limit for Miller, who had asked for an exception, according to its March denial letter.
She said she spent months fighting with Wake County school officials and did not turn to federal government sooner because she hoped she could resolve the issues locally.
Miller fears for her children’s future unless something changes at school.
“I’m a single parent, and one day I won’t be here,” she said. “My kids are going to be adults soon, yet my son doesn’t know how to read and write. I’m like, ‘Wow.’ There really is no help here.”
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council is set to vote on a resolution Thursday that would once again demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, while expressing alarm about a recent famine report and Israel’s expanding offensive in Gaza City.
All 14 other members of the council are expected to vote in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.
Related Articles
In coastal Ghana, female oyster farmers try to save an old practice threatened by climate change
Women’s rights activists rally in Belgium fearing US plans for birth control supplies
Warsaw turns to Ukraine for drone warfare expertise after Russian drones enter Polish airspace
Strikes and protests roil France, pitting the streets against Macron and his new prime minister
Today in History: September 18, FBI captures Patricia Hearst
The expected outcome further highlights U.S. and Israeli isolation on the world stage regarding the nearly two-year war in Gaza. The vote comes just days ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, where Gaza will be a major topic and where major U.S. allies are expected to recognize an independent Palestinian state. It is a largely symbolic move that is vehemently opposed by Israel and the U.S., dividing the Trump administration from close allies including the U.K. and France.
The resolution, drafted by the council’s 10 elected members who serve two-year terms, goes further than previous drafts to highlight what it calls the “ deepening of suffering ” of Palestinian civilians.
It also reiterates demands from previous resolutions, including for the release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups following their Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack in southern Israel that launched the war in Gaza.
In opposing similar resolutions since November, the U.S. has complained that the demands, including a ceasefire, were not directly linked to the unconditional release of hostages and would only embolden Hamas.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., blasted the new resolution, saying that it would “not release the hostages and will not bring security to the region.”
“Israel will continue to fight Hamas and protect its citizens, even if the Security Council prefers to turn a blind eye to terrorism,” he said in a statement Thursday.
The resolution also expressed “deep alarm” after a report released last month by the world’s leading authority on food crises said Gaza City has become gripped by famine, and that it’s likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Israeli forces have pressed on with a new ground offensive in Gaza City. The latest Israeli operation, which started Tuesday, further escalates a conflict that has roiled the Middle East and likely pushes any ceasefire further out of reach.
The Israeli military, which says it wants to “destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure,” hasn’t given a timeline for the offensive, but there were indications it could take months.
That same day, a team of independent experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, issuing a report that called on the international community to end it and take steps to punish those responsible for it.
Last week, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state.
Expectations for a U.S. veto of the resolution Thursday comes as about half of Americans say the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip has “gone too far,” according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from November 2023, when 40% said Israel’s military action had gone too far.
But at the same time, Americans overall, particularly Republicans, are less likely to say that negotiating a ceasefire should be a high priority for the U.S. government than they were just a few months ago when the U.S. was holding ceasefire talks with Hamas.
