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Lina Khan Facing Stiff Resistance from New Republican Commissioners
June 19, 2024
Lina Khan as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission has blazed a path largely unobstructed by Congress, an adoring press, and a professional staff that she has isolated and intimidated. Only the courts have served as a bulwark, blocking her more exotic legal theories and kicking four of her big cases to the curb.
For months, open seats on the minority (Republican) side of the Commission have also left Chair Khan able to run the agency as she wishes. There was no insider to call her out the way former Commissioner Christine Wilson did.
That free ride now seems to be rolling to a stop.
Newly appointed Republican FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson recently told an audience at George Mason’s Mercatus Center, “I am a lawyer in a law enforcement job, not a policymaker.” He added that Khan’s antitrust enforcement is “a radical departure from the consensus about what constitutes reasonableness in rulemaking.”
Melissa Holyoak, the other newly appointed Republican commissioner, in a recent speech at the Competitive Enterprise Institute described FTC’s rulemaking as overly expansive as Khan gets over her skis. Expansive rulemaking, Holyoak said, “wastes substantial resources on a long-term projects that, because they are ultimately held unlawful, confer no benefits to consumers.”