Lina Khan is What's Right with Federal Government

Unfortunately, the larger the government body, the more difficult it can be to find positive stories to tell. As a rule, the bigger the bureaucracy, the more entrenched it becomes. The longer the institution’s history, the deeper the rot. In today’s world of public policy, FTC chair Lina Khan’s story is one worth telling.

Khan’s meteoric rise saw the Yale Law School-educated attorney named chair of the Federal Trade Commission at just 32 years old. Born in London and raised in New York, Khan’s coming-out moment was the publication of a paper titled "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" in the Yale Law Journal. In it, she argued that the American antitrust law structure, which primarily focuses on low consumer prices, was not effective for the anti-competitive practices of platform-based business models like Amazon’s.

The paper won numerous awards and made big waves throughout legal and antitrust circles. After law school, Khan was tapped as legal director at the Open Markets Institute, which was part of the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank. However, after she and her team criticized Google's market power, the institute split from New America following pressure from one of its primary donors—Google.

Khan’s star continued to rise when she was hired as a legal fellow at the Federal Trade Commission in 2018. The following year, she began serving as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, where she led the congressional investigation into digital markets—an issue that had drawn interest from both parties. Khan gained fans on both sides of the aisle, ranging from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren to Makan Delrahim, the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division under Donald Trump.

Soon after his inauguration, President Biden nominated Khan to be an FTC Commissioner, and she was approved with bipartisan support. Biden then appointed her chair. Khan got right to work and didn’t mind ruffling feathers. Under her leadership, the FTC successfully used the courts to bring down the cost of insulin and inhalers, which were being inflated by monopolistic practices. Americans who suffer from asthma or diabetes and had to choose medicine or food because of corporate greed can thank Khan.

Under Khan, the FTC voted unanimously to enforce the right to repair and take legal action against companies that limited the scope of repair work independent repair shops could perform on products such as automobiles, electronics, and farm equipment.

In October, then-candidate Donald Trump joked, “When I’m president, the McDonald’s ice cream machines will work great again!” The day before, however, the United States Copyright Office announced a new exemption granting some small business owners and franchisees the “right to repair” the machinery within their own shops. Approximately a third of the ice cream machines are out of order at any given time. Despite a host of small, cheap, easily replaceable parts often being the cause, the manufacturer barred anyone else from doing repair work.

Khan introduced broad crackdowns against companies like Amazon that use monopolistic practices. She also successfully blocked sales and mergers that would have led to fewer choices in the marketplace, including preventing Chip manufacturer Nvidia from purchasing ARM holdings. The FTC is currently challenging Kroger's proposed acquisition of Albertsons, arguing that it would lead to higher consumer prices and less leverage for unionized employees. More broadly, it is probing grocery store prices to look for anti-competitive behavior and price gouging at chain supermarkets. In other words, Khan's FTC is doing real work to reign in inflationary prices that, because of corporate greed, continue long after COVID-related supply chain issues have receded. 

In October, the FTC announced that it had successfully implemented Khan’s long pushed for “click to cancel” rule, which simplifies the process of canceling unused subscriptions. The rule, which goes into effect 180 days after it was added to the federal register, is simple. If you signed up for a service online, you must also be able to cancel on the same website and in the same number of steps. Gone will be the days of having to call a hard-to-reach customer service line with limited hours and being forced to go to the health club in person so that someone can try to talk you out of the decision.

Khan also went after the notorious Live Nation/Ticketmaster monopoly that has led to an astronomical increase in the cost of concerts and other ticketed events, calling the monolithic conglomerate “too big to care.” The Justice Department is currently suing the behemoth for its monopolistic practices.

Khan also took on big corporations for their abuse of non-compete clauses. Once the province of owners and senior executives with lavish compensation and golden parachutes, this tool was increasingly being abused to limit the ability of dissatisfied bottom-rung employees to seek other opportunities. Even fast-food companies have been using them! The clauses impacted around 30 million Americans. In April, Khan’s FTC voted to ban the practice on all but the most senior executives in a corporation.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown put the ban on hold in July. It was then upheld on appeal by U.S. District Judge Kelley B. Hodge later that month. On August 20, 2024, a federal court in Texas overturned the ban, which was initially scheduled to take effect on September 4. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown said the FTC did not have the authority to issue the ban, and it remains to be seen whether the FTC will continue the court ruling under the Trump administration.

While Khan has earned significant praise from some in Trump’s inner circle, including J.D. Vance and Matt Gaetz, it is all but certain she will be ousted come January. Elon Musk recently tweeted that “(Khan) will be fired soon.” Under Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, it is even conceivable that the FTC would be eliminated entirely. Aside from Musk, there are simply too many billionaires among Trump's donor base (about 75 percent of billionaires who supported presidential campaigns in 2024 supported Trump).

That said, it’s not even likely that Khan would have survived in a Harris presidency. The Vice President never mentioned her on the campaign trail and was getting pressure from Silicon Valley and billionaires like Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman to part ways with the talented bureaucrat. In a capitalist society, when the best interests of workers and consumers collide with big capital, the former almost always loses. For a little while, that seemed to change. I’m not sure where Lina Khan goes from here, but I do know this. If she ever shows up on a ballot, she’s got my vote.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection, which are available here.