FTC readies lawsuit that could break up Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission is finalizing its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, four people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO, a move that could ultimately break up parts of the company.

The FTC has been investigating the company on a number of fronts, and the coming case would be one of the most aggressive and high-profile moves in the Biden administration’s rocky effort to tame the power of tech giants. The wide-ranging lawsuit is expected as soon as August, and will likely challenge a host of Amazon’s business practices, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter. If successful, it could lead to a court-ordered restructuring of the $1.3 trillion empire and define the legacy of FTC Chair Lina Khan.

Khan rose to prominence as a Big Tech skeptic with a 2017 academic paper specifically identifying Amazon as a modern monopolist needing to be reined in. Because any case will likely take years to wind through the courts, the final result will rest with her successors.

The exact details of the final lawsuit are not known, and changes to the final complaint are expected until the eleventh hour. But personnel throughout the agency, including Khan herself, have homed in on several of Amazon’s business practices, said some of the people.

The complaint is likely to focus on challenges to Amazon Prime, Amazon rules that the FTC says block lower prices on competing websites, and policies the FTC believes force merchants to use Amazon’s logistics and advertising services, according to some of the people.

The agency has been drafting a complaint since at least the end of last year, some of the people said, and is likely to file its case in federal court rather than its in-house tribunal.

In its probe, the FTC has interviewed dozens of witnesses both inside and outside Amazon, including CEO Andy Jassy and former CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, some of the people said. The FTC has collected millions of documents from Amazon and third parties over the last three years to build its case.

Spokespeople for Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.

Among the potential claims are allegations similar to existing cases from the attorneys general in Washington, D.C., and California, some of the people said. Those cases center on Amazon’s rules requiring third-party retailers to offer their lowest prices on its platform, thereby cutting off the possibility of lower prices elsewhere.

Amazon has previously disputed those allegations saying sellers set the prices for their goods. A Washington, D.C., judge threw out the case, but a California judge is letting it move forward.

Amazon Prime, which began as a subscription for unlimited free shipping, is also expected to be a target, some of the people said. Prime has evolved to include books, music and video streaming. The FTC is concerned that the bundle of services is used to illegally cement the company’s market power.

The FTC is also expected to claim that Amazon steers sellers to its own logistics services, which include shipping and warehousing, by rewarding them with better placement on the site, and punishing them when they don’t, some of the people said. Amazon briefly allowed sellers to use other logistics providers and still receive prioritized listings, but discontinued that several years ago., though it recently announced it is restarting that program. Bloomberg earlier reported the likely inclusion of claims involving the logistics business.

Amazon’s rapidly growing digital advertising business will also likely be targeted, some of the people said. The agency is concerned Amazon forces merchants to buy ads in order to get better placement in customer search results. The FTC sees advertising as a tax Amazon can collect after forcing sellers to use its platform through price parity provisions requiring the lowest prices on its site, some of the people said.

The Amazon investigation began in the Trump administration under former Chair Joe Simons. However, he prioritized a different investigation into Meta’s Facebook. Shortly after Khan joined the agency, she bulked up and reorganized the team leading the Amazon probe, a move first reported by The Information.

Top enforcement officials in the Biden administration have aggressively gone after corporate mergers in the past year, but more often than not have struck out. The FTC lost its bid to block Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision last week, which came months after another loss in its case to block Meta’s acquisition of a popular virtual reality app. The spate of high-profile losses has amped up pressure on the FTC to bring a successful case against Amazon.

The Justice Department meanwhile has two separate lawsuits against Google over its search and advertising businesses, the former of which is scheduled for a two-month trial in September. It is preparing an antitrust case against Apple, and has pending investigations into Ticketmaster and Visa, among others.

Amazon has sought Khan’s recusal both for her past statements against the company and over investigative work into the tech sector while a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee. The agency has not ruled on the request, but filing a case in federal court will help sidestep the issue. In its in-house tribunal, FTC commissioners serve as prosecutors and judges, a role that makes Khan more susceptible to claims of bias.

The FTC could also bring state attorneys general on board for the lawsuit, another reason to file in federal court. In addition to California and Washington, D.C., New York is also investigating the company.

And while there is no large, formal multistate alliance investigating Amazon, as there is with Facebook and Google, other states could join the FTC’s case. The FTC has told some states that it plans to share more information by the end of July that can be used to determine whether to join its lawsuit, some of the people said.

The exact allegations will determine who joins. Some states — and some within the agency — have pushed back against making Prime, a popular consumer service, a focal point of the case, some of the people said.

This will not be the first case the FTC has filed against Amazon under Khan. The company recently agreed to pay $30 million to settle a pair of privacy lawsuits involving its Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa smart speakers made for kids. Amazon is also fighting allegations that it has made Prime unnecessarily difficult to cancel. And the FTC is currently investigating the company’s purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot, which POLITICO previously reported that agency staff are leaning toward trying to block.

Amazon has also settled similar allegations in Europe by making changes to its sales practices and restricting its use of data from third-party sellers on its European web stores.

One of the FTC’s final steps before filing a lawsuit will be to give Amazon’s executives and attorneys a final chance to plead their case before the commissioners. That so-called last rites meeting, largely a formality, is not expected to take place until at least August, two of the people said, and is expected to be the last step before a case is filed.

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West scrambles to hash out details of Ukraine F-16 training

The U.S. national security adviser said the administration will move “as fast as possible” to get F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. A top White House spokesperson said the aircraft would be in Ukrainian skies “towards the end of the year.”

But so far, Western partners have yet to even agree on a plan to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the promised jets, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. Denmark and the Netherlands are leading a coalition of 11 nations to support the training, but so far no country has publicly committed aircraft to the program.

The scramble by the West comes as Ukraine calls for additional military capabilities to break through Russian defenses on the battlefield. And Ukraine is ramping up pressure on allies to send F-16s again this week, as Russia pulled out of a deal that allowed civilian ships to transport grain through the Black Sea; Ukraine’s foreign minister said Tuesday that the jets could help protect a corridor that is vital to global food security.

One training proposal that has been discussed involves bringing Ukrainian pilots to the United States to receive instruction from the 162nd Air Wing, an Air National Guard unit based in Tucson, Ariz., that already trains foreign partners on the F-16.

But that idea has had little traction, according to two of the U.S. officials and a European official. They, along with others interviewed, were granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been finalized.

Another plan involves sending U.S. military pilots to Europe to train the Ukrainians somewhere outside of that country.

Nothing is off the table, and no final decisions have been made, said two of the U.S. officials.

“There’s collaboration ongoing,” one of the officials said. “We are working with our partners and allies to determine the most practical way to implement this plan.”

The coalition has taken certain steps to start the training. Aerospace contractor Draken International has begun recruiting retired military pilots to train the Ukrainians, according to one of the U.S. officials and a job posting that was since taken down. This effort will take place at a facility that’s being built in Romania and is envisioned to be a regional F-16 training center.

Another training center will also be set up in Denmark, European officials said.

European partners hope training can start this summer, most likely at a location in Europe, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said Tuesday. In the meantime, the U.K. plans to begin basic flying and language training for Ukrainian pilots within a few weeks, she said.

“In terms of any aircraft delivery or any additional timelines, I just don’t have anything for you today,” Singh said.

Despite the various ambitious timelines, training cannot start on the F-16s until the U.S. State Department formally approves the transfer of associated training materials, such as instruction manuals and flight simulators. That signoff, which is required under export restrictions, still has not taken place.

Asked recently about the holdup, national security adviser Jake Sullivan seemed to place responsibility on the Europeans, saying that those countries needed a few more weeks to create the necessary training infrastructure.

A spokesperson for the Danish defense ministry declined to comment; a spokesperson for the Dutch defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A U.S. State Department spokesperson also declined to comment on a proposed transfer of materials.

Realistically, U.S. officials say the jets won’t arrive until the spring at the earliest.

“We’d probably get some pilots flying, training by the end of the year, but an actual F-16 with Ukrainian colors” is not likely before the spring, said a fourth U.S. official.

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Judge knocks down Biden’s asylum policy as illegal border crossings dip

A federal judge Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s new regulation restricting asylum-seekers, one that contributed to a severe drop in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few months.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, an Obama appointee in Oakland, Calif., knocked down the restrictions as “arbitrary and capricious,” while staying his ruling for 14 days to give the Biden administration an opportunity to appeal. Tigar also halted a similar measure — the Trump administration’s so-called transit ban — a few years ago, joking during last week’s hearing that he heard “2023 was going to be a big year for sequels.”

The judge’s 35-page ruling marks the latest legal hurdle facing the Biden administration’s immigration policy, which has faced multiple challenges from both ends of the political spectrum. Tigar’s decision jeopardizes the administration’s strictest deterrence measure to date and comes as illegal border crossings have plunged to their lowest level since President Joe Biden’s first full month in office.

The Justice Department moved quickly Tuesday afternoon to file an appeal, noting it “disagrees” with the court’s ruling.

“We remain confident in our position that the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule is a lawful exercise of the broad authority granted by the immigration laws,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement.

Tigar detailed a series of legal faults with the Biden asylum rule, including its basis on outdated or inaccurate assumptions and that it was made available for public comment during an abbreviated 33-day window. The judge raised particular concern about the administration’s effort to require most asylum applicants to present themselves at established ports of entry, rather than claiming asylum after crossing between border posts.

“The Court concludes that the Rule is contrary to law because it presumes ineligible for asylum noncitizens who enter between ports of entry, using a manner of entry that Congress expressly intended should not affect access to asylum,” Tigar wrote.

Requests for comment from the White House and Department of Homeland Security were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Biden’s “asylum ban,” released in May and set to expire in two years, bars some migrants from applying for humanitarian protection if they cross the border illegally or fail to first apply for safe harbor while crossing through another country on the way to the U.S. The rule is not applied to certain migrants, including unaccompanied children, asylum-seekers who enter at a legal port of entry or those fleeing “imminent” harm.

Immediately after the rule was issued this spring, upon the end of Title 42 health orders, immigrants rights advocates moved to sue the Biden administration and accused the White House of deploying President Donald Trump’s immigration playbook. The plaintiffs cheered Tuesday’s ruling, urging the Biden administration to drop its legal battle.

“The court’s ruling is welcome and expected, since the new policy simply rehashed prior rules that restricted access to asylum based on similar grounds, which courts already rejected,” Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said in a statement.

“U.S. laws protect the rights of people fleeing persecution to come to this country and pursue asylum, full stop. We encourage the Biden administration to now direct its resources to upholding that right, rather than fighting to continue this unlawful and inhumane asylum ban.”

Administration officials have rejected the notion that the two-year rule is like the Trump transit ban, which also required asylum-seekers to seek asylum through the first country they crossed on their way to the U.S. During last week’s hearing, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the current asylum restrictions are different because they are paired with a number of new legal pathways and that asylum-seekers can apply for an appointment through the CBP smartphone app.

The southern border has remained a vexing challenge for the president — one that’s not expected to dissipate as Republicans seize on the border as a base rallying issue in 2024. The ruling is also a blow to the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 border plan, but it’s not clear how it will affect declining border crossings.

While administration officials have credited the asylum rule in part for the drop in border crossings, some immigration experts argue the use of the CBP One app, voluntary departure and the expansion of legal pathways have played a larger role in the plummeting border numbers.

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The Crisis in Israel Is Just Getting Started

JERUSALEM — It’s a strange experience to observe the place you live in slide from controlled crisis into utter chaos in just under 24 hours.

Crisis is a fairly common situation in Israel. There is always something going on. Hamas launches rockets; Israelis enjoy brunch. Hezbollah threatens to annihilate the country; Israelis know their air force will chortle.

This may be one of the reasons Israelis developed a “there he goes again” indulgence toward Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, and an eternal bad boy of local politics. Last November, he managed to pull off reelection, barely, while on trial for corruption.

Yet this time — with skunk water cannons turned on peaceful protesters, army reservists resigning and global banks and credit ratings agencies downgrading Israel — Israel’s seven-month crisis is past and chaos has taken over. It feels as if the country’s DNA has been transformed. As always, it’s been a long time coming, but the change feels brutal and shocking. The air feels different.

Netanyahu is plowing ahead with a radical project he calls “judicial reform,” which would subsume Israel’s judiciary under an almost all-powerful executive. Over the past seven months, it has advanced under cover of a shimmer of irreality that has torn open the country’s rifts. The only question was whether his hard-right, religious, nationalist government would back down in the face of massive international alarm and domestic resistance.

The latest chapter opened on Sunday night, when former President Reuven Rivlin, 83, addressed a crowd of about 100,000 opponents of Netanyahu’s attempted power grab and Jerusalem still felt like Jerusalem.

After a sweltering day, the hilltop city’s famous breeze seemed to caress the crowd.

Behind me, smiling protesters shared bags of grapes they’d brought from home. Their hope seemed to be that just maybe they could recreate March, when a popular uprising with hundreds of thousands in the streets gave Netanyahu pause and pushed him to step back from a draconian law changing the Judicial Appointments Committee, that would have brought Israel closer to authoritarianism.

While Netanyahu has conspicuously dismissed increasingly dire warnings from everyone from President Joe Biden to Israeli reserve air force commanders, the idea of an Israel turned into a nation subservient to the iron fist of a strongman doesn't quite jibe with lived experience here.

The time and the place at which Rivlin, a respected elder statesman and the scion of a well-known Jerusalem family, addressed the crowd could hardly have been more symbolic. He climbed up the steps to the improvised stage at the corner of Kaplan and Rabin streets, just above Ben Zvi Boulevard, which are named for two signatories of Israel’s declaration of independence and a hero of the War of Independence, and reminisced about seeing the first Israeli flag raised in Jerusalem in May 1948.

“As a boy I distributed water to the fighters of Jerusalem,” he remembered, mentioning that his grandchildren always ask him why he tears up during Independence Day celebrations. “I loved the state,” he said. “I saw in its establishment a miracle.”

But Rivlin was not indulging in sentimentality. “Our job is to see if we can save our wonderful country in the next 24 hours,” he said, as if through his own person he could, somehow, channel all the energy that had built the state to cure what now ails it.

He begged Netanyahu, who he has known since childhood, to reconsider. “There is only one person who can prevent this disaster from harming our country,” he said, “and that is Benjamin Netanyahu.” The crowd hissed, and Rivlin shushed them, saying “we can make accounts later.”

Beseeching, almost keening, he said “I ask Netanyahu, as someone who sees himself as a Jewish leader who is perhaps as great as Moses, to save this nation and prevent civil war.”

Absurd as this was, he did not mean it as a joke. Around me, those who were still listening to Rivlin tittered. Moses? But Netanyahu’s ego is a real factor. And we were, after all, in Jerusalem, almost at the eve of Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of both the first and second ancient Temples, the symbols of squandered and defeated Jewish sovereignty, caused, according to legend, by hatred and infighting among Jews.

Near me, a man offered passersby cookies his wife baked for the tens of thousands of Israelis who spent four days hiking in 95-degree heat from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to protest Netanyahu’s judicial blitz.

Witty protest signs abounded. “Bibi, haven’t the Jews suffered enough?” “Cuties for Democracy.”

On the sidelines, a tall, willowy young man who could have passed for one of the city’s Jesus impersonators held high a large flag emblazoned with the drawing of a slice of watermelon. Over the seven months of swelling protests on Israeli streets, during which police began confiscating red, green, white and black Palestinian flags at the orders of Netanyahu’s extremist National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the seeded fruit has become a jokey metaphor.

I asked Jesus if many people asked him about the watermelon, and he said it was a great conversation starter. He was among those who’d spent the night at “The City of God,” the protest tent city which had emerged seemingly in an instant at the adjacent Sacher Park.

With a smile, glancing at some 2,000 neat rows of tents, another protester commented that “it may not be a good idea to turn the Israeli army’s entire logistical command against you.”

Netanyahu has long enjoyed his reputation as Israel’s “Mr. Security,” but in this latest incarnation, he has turned against the military establishment that has been among the most forceful sectors opposing his judicial coup.

Adding to the general strangeness of recent months, Netanyahu, born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in progressive Tel Aviv, appears to inhabit an alternate sphere. He, his son Yair, and, on Tuesday, his brother, Iddo Netanyahu, have all spread the far-right conspiracy theory that Biden is fomenting or even financing the growing protest movement.

When fighter pilots rose to prominence among the opponents to Netanyahu’s plans, his minister of communications, Shlomo Karhi, suggested the pilots — who are lionized figures in Israeli society — “can go to hell.”

Twenty-four hours later, it was all over.

Rivlin’s words, like Moody’s warning of a credit downgrade, like the pilots’ threats to withdraw from reserve duty, like the doctors’ strike, like the millions of Israelis who’ve marched against the administrative power grab, had fallen on deaf ears.

On Monday afternoon, in what felt, despite months of buildup, like a stunning and casual stealth vote, Netanyahu’s coalition passed a bill eliminating Israel’s “Reasonability Clause,” a legal tool enabling the judiciary to strike down improper government appointments and executive decisions. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, said “The government has declared a war of attrition against its own citizens.”

All joshing was gone. In the hours leading up to the vote, Netanyahu turned down a request from Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to meet. He didn’t want to be briefed. Reality, be gone.

Adding to the sense of an impending apocalypse, Netanyahu, 73, barely made it to his own fateful vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. He was released from the hospital after the emergency implantation of a pacemaker about two hours before the roll call began, and, uncharacteristically, he gripped the handrail hard as he slowly descended the steps to the plenum.

Within half an hour of the bill passing, 64-0 amid an opposition boycott, hundreds of pilots posted pictures of themselves, many in tears, sending their unit commanders letters ending their decades of service. “We signed a contract to fight for the realm,” they wrote. “We will not fight for a king.” The Israel Defense Forces later revealed that more than half of the air force personnel that signed the original petition to Netanyahu, including pilots, had followed through and informed their units they would no longer report to reserve duty.

Itamar Ben Gvir, one of Netanyahu’s most outlandish appointments, was among those exulting. Before receiving the plum national security post he was a renowned agitator convicted eight times of terror and hate crimes. On Monday night, he gleefully declared that the elimination of the Reasonableness Clause “was just an appetizer. The salad bar is open.”

Meanwhile, the threads holding Israeli society together had burst, and the country burned. On Monday, police brought clubs, mounted police and water cannons to disperse the Jerusalem protesters at the triangular corner bounded by the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the foreign ministry. Several were wounded. Both in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem, law enforcement lost control of the streets for a period of some three hours, into the dawn.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut, who is scheduled to retire in October, hastily cut short an official visit to Germany to return home and face the havoc.

By Tuesday, more than a dozen Supreme Court petitions had already been filed demanding that the court strike down the law eliminating the Reasonableness Clause. Courts commonly rule on their own standing, but this case will very likely thrust Israel into full-blown constitutional anarchy.

The next phase of the crisis is expected to unfold rapidly: The Supreme Court may well rule that Netanyahu’s law is illegal, and the government will declare the court ruling invalid.

Israel, within weeks, will be suspended over the abyss. Whose orders will the police obey? Ben Gvir’s, when they are beyond judicial review? Or those of the rule of law? On Monday, an Israeli television channel reported that Mossad Director Dadi Barnea had assured his agents, in an abruptly convened general staff meeting, that his organization would obey the rule of law, but what does that mean in practice?

No one really knows. Netanyahu is engaging in a form of shock doctrine, the tried-and-true method used by leaders to overwhelm the public sphere and impose their will. This was felt in the dread that descended upon the Monday night crowd, where no one was cheerfully passing fruit around.

Instead, it felt like a Rubicon had been crossed.

Early Tuesday, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s top civil servant, who several Netanyahu ministers have threatened to fire once the Reasonableness Clause was gone, urged the Supreme Court to rule against another law passed a few weeks ago, which makes it virtually impossible for a prime minister to be declared unfit for office. “The Knesset’s constitutive authority was misused,” she wrote.

It is just beginning.

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Greta Thunberg fined for disobeying police during climate protest in Sweden

The climate activist admitted that she refused a police order but denied committing a crime.

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Romney's new plea to consolidate GOP anti-Trump forces

The Utah Republican is calling on donors and influencers to get candidates to drop out by late February.

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AOC blasts ‘insatiable’ CEOs’ private jets on SAG-AFTRA picket line

NEW YORK — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) joined the actors and writers unions on a picket line in Manhattan Monday, lending her own considerable star power to the fight for more-favorable contracts with movie studios.

“How many private jets does David Zaslav need?” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, outside of the company’s headquarters.

“For real, how many private jets do these CEOs need? It is insatiable. It is unacceptable. I do not know how any person can say I need another $100 million before another person can have health care.”

The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May 2 demanding better pay and benefits. The actors union, SAG-AFTRA, just called their own strike on July 14. Democratic politicians have backed them, with President Joe Biden and progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among others, issuing statements in support of the striking workers.

One major sticking point has been the use of artificial intelligence in writing scripts. But Ocasio-Cortez hammered home the essential and irreplaceable nature of the writers’ work.

“The only way we can bust this up is by giving the people in charge a reality check by reminding them that if they leave the job, life goes on. But if we leave the job, everything comes to a halt,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And all of this will grind to a half and the money train will end for them if labor and actors and writers and everybody, all workers, aren’t respected and paid with dignity.”

As one of the most progressive members of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez has made solidarity with labor unions a pillar of her political brand.

She recently joined a rally with the Teamsters earlier this month on Long Island, as they threatened to strike if a contract can’t be reached with UPS by Aug. 1. Though Ocasio-Cortez received some backlash from other socialists for voting to block a December 2022 strike by Railroad Workers United, She defended the vote as following the will of the rank and file members.

“We are in a hot labor summer right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the looming Teamsters strike, and other actions that have put Biden and the White House in a difficult spot.

Asked if Congress should do anything about the actors’ and writers’ contract negotiations, Ocasio-Cortez said she was just there for her constituents. “If SAG-AFTRA, if WGA calls on Congress then I think that’s something that should absolutely be considered,” she said. “But until then, we’ve got to get out of their way, and let the workers do their thing.”

The strikes have particular relevance to Ocasio-Cortez’s 14th Congressional District, which includes a number of soundstages and film studios. She also represents a high concentration of members of the unions. The Queens neighborhood of Astoria in her district has been dubbed “Actoria” for the number of performers living there.

But she said she hasn’t heard from the studios. “I hear a lot from the workers and actors.”

Warner Bros. Discovery did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, has said the strike will cause financial hardship for other workers who depend on the industry.

Ocasio–Cortez walked the picket line for about 45 minutes. The block-long line of well over a hundred people also passed in front of the Manhattan office of Netflix.

Actor F. Murray Abraham, who was nominated for an Emmy for his role as the grandfather on season two of “The White Lotus,” also joined the picket line Monday. “Without a union, there is no middle class. And without a middle class, there is no democracy. Unions are good for America,” he said.

Abraham brushed off a question about whether it was odd for him to see Ocasio-Cortez getting all the media attention at the picket. “No! No. We’re all union people. I want to represent. Solidarity. Unity,” he said. “My grandfather from Italy helped form the miners union in the early part of the last century. I’m a union man from way back.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance came after the simultaneous opening of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” led to one of the biggest weekends for movies in history. Ocasio-Cortez herself was part of that fandom.

“I did watch Barbie this weekend. I saw it in Astoria. I thought it was great. Loved it. And it’s a union production. So what more could you ask for?”

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