Key Takeaways from the National Association of Attorneys General 2025 Capital Forum

Beginning on December 8, 2025, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) held its three‑day Capital Forum in Washington, D.C. Throughout the Forum, Attorneys General (AGs), their senior staff, federal officials, and other subject matter experts presented on a series of topics addressing important policy issues and latest legal developments. Panels addressed a diverse set of topics, including children’s online safety, predictive markets, enforcement priorities related to everyday costs for American families, and antitrust, and demonstrated the continued active enforcement agendas of state AGs, including working in multi-state groups and in a non-partisan manner. 

Breaking the Scroll: Safeguarding Youth Mental Health from Digital Manipulation

For the first session of the Forum, Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost led a discussion about children’s online safety. Presenters included Vanderbilt University Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery Research Assistant Professor Kristen Gilliland, Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin, Fairplay Policy Counsel Haley Hinkle, Survivor Parent Julianna Arnold, and Young People’s Alliance, & Youth Survivor Director of Advocacy Ava Smithing. The panel explored the growing intersection between children’s online safety, artificial intelligence (AI), and platform accountability, focusing on their view that current digital products and regulatory frameworks often fail to protect young users. 

Panelists discussed ongoing enforcement and litigation efforts, including Federal Trade Commission investigations, multi-state AG lawsuits against TikTok, and individual state AG lawsuits against Roblox. Panelists also highlighted AI-specific risks, such as chatbots designed to prolong engagement and the emergence of AI-enabled sextortion. Speaking on the recent federal preemption debate, Fairplay’s Josh Golin urged state AGs to oppose sweeping federal preemption provisions in proposed updates to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.  

Fairplay’s Haley Finkle focused on areas of state success, including the safety-by-design approach in legislation to target harmful design features such as personalized feeds and overnight notifications. Finkle also stressed the success of the bell-to-bell phone-free framework, which limits devise use during the school day for students and teachers.

The panelists identified several priority areas for state AG focus, including deceptive claims around parental controls and safety features, and warned that, in their view, many technology companies promote reassuring public narratives that mask dangerous realities, underscoring the need for strong accountability around safety claims. Additional concerns discussed by the panelists included what the panelists see as manipulative practices in social media and video games, such as microtransactions and virtual currencies that resemble gambling mechanics.

The panel makes clear that state AGs remain extremely focused on social media’s effects on minors and will continue to work separately and together through multi-state and non-partisan efforts to use their broad civil powers on issues related to parental controls, AI chatbots, and safety design.

Predictive Markets: Legal Challenges & Regulatory Risks Ahead

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown led a discussion about the emerging world of predictive markets, including how they operate, their potential benefits, and legal and regulatory challenges related to these markets. Predictive markets are platforms that generally allow participants to trade contracts with payouts tied to the outcome of future events, oftentimes engaging with market-based probabilities on economic, political, or real-world events. Panelists included American Gaming Association Vice President of Government Relations Tres York, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP Partner and Co-Chair of Financial Markets and Regulation Daniel J. Davis, and Milbank LLP Partner Joshua B. Sterling.

The panel focused on the tensions surrounding predictive markets, including comparisons with sports betting platforms and the regulatory authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).  Sterling, counsel for the regulated exchange and prediction market Kalshi, discussed ongoing litigation challenging state enforcement actions, including cease-and-desist letters issued by regulators in nine states. He argued that these actions conflict with federal authority regarding derivatives trading and pose broader threats to states’ rights and tribal sovereignty. The dispute has drawn significant attention, with 34 amicus briefs filed in the New Jersey litigation, including by the Ohio and Nevada AGs. The New Jersey litigation showcases heightened state enforcement risk for prediction market participants, as state AGs and regulators may increasingly assert regulatory jurisdiction over products under state gambling and consumer protection laws instead of ceding authority to the CFTC and other federal regulators.

Enforcement Priorities Related to Everyday Costs for American Families

NAAG President and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong was joined by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella in a discussion about the impact of rising costs on families across the country. The panelists discussed key cases that their offices are pursuing with their goal of keeping prices fair and protecting consumers from what they see as harmful practices in a number of sectors, including healthcare, electricity, water, internet, and cellular services.

Attorney General Tong shared that although Connecticut successfully blocked more than $700 million in proposed electricity and water rate increases, overall costs continue to rise. Connecticut also is focused on investigating hidden and so-called junk fees in pricing practices for restaurant bills and airline tickets. In addition, the state is scrutinizing dynamic pricing systems, citing a lack of transparency and accessibility, and raising concerns about disclosure in buy-now-pay-later products, which purportedly are often poorly explained to customers.

Attorney General Hanaway highlighted Missouri’s successful trial against MV Realty Holdings, LLC, a Florida-based company that was found to have misled homeowners into restrictive brokerage arrangements without clearly disclosing long-term obligations. The litigation resulted in restitution for hundreds of Missouri residents. The state also is monitoring alleged predatory conduct by contractors, particularly those targeting communities after natural disasters.

General Formella discussed New Hampshire’s focus on the downstream and indirect costs of healthcare consolidation, particularly in rural areas, which purportedly leads to the elimination of essential services at community hospitals and forces families to travel long distances for care. 

Across states, Attorneys General described shared priorities, including tackling what they view as anti‑competitive pricing, addressing shrinkflation, and confronting deceptive fee structures. States are also concerned about AI-driven dynamic pricing that has the potential to harm pricing systems and create an opportunity for exploitation.  States further flagged tensions with local governments that may prioritize short-term financial gains without adequate consideration of long-term impact. For example, selling hospitals to the highest bidder may cause a reduction in health care services and an increase in community costs. The Attorneys General emphasized their role in educating local offices and the public about these potential tradeoffs, reinforcing that driving down costs requires both enforcement and sustained policy coordination.

State and Federal Partnerships in Antitrust Enforcement

In the final panel discussion of the forum, Connecticut Attorney General Tong sat down with Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Colorado Deputy Attorney General for Consumer Protection Nathan Blake to discuss state and federal partnerships on important antitrust matters, including challenging potential monopolies in the technology industry to reviewing mergers that impact the products and services that consumers buy every day. The session discussed state AGs working successfully with federal partners, current enforcement priorities, and the focus of state and federal enforcers in the coming years.

Attorney General Skrmetti framed antitrust as pro-consumer rather than anti-business, stressing that enforcement should focus on clear, accessible narratives about how consolidation harms consumers, rather than relying on overly complex economic arguments. Deputy Attorney General Blake spoke about Colorado’s experience with the Kroger-Albertsons merger and the importance of direct public engagement, including town halls with the community.

All panelists underscored the need for strong state antitrust laws and cross-state collaboration through information sharing. Looking ahead, speakers identified priority areas for antitrust scrutiny in technology, agriculture, and financial markets sectors.

NAAG Plans for 2026 and Beyond

Looking into 2026, state AGs are positioning themselves as frontline regulators, especially in areas where federal regulators may be pivoting away, using both traditional enforcement and innovative remedies to address what they view as complex, technology-driven harms that directly affect families and communities. Coordination across states is expected to increase as state AGs continue to work together, especially in the areas of children’s online protection, certain consumer cost issues, and antitrust.