Top Donors Choose Antitrust Champion

We recently learned about Project 2025, the GOP plan to allow corporate agents to take over our government. But there is also a less visible effort by some donors to also force Democrats to install corporate-owned officials to expand their monopoly power.

Wall Street and Silicon Valley high-flyers are quietly demanding that Kamala Harris commit to appointing their appointed sycophants to oversee America’s so-called “free enterprise” structure. Their primary target is the Federal Trade Commission, a little-known agency tasked with protecting and expanding economic competition.

The FTC is currently headed by Lina Khan, a staunch opponent of anti-consumer and anti-worker M&A. She rightly recognizes that the “free” in free enterprise is not an adjective but a verb, requiring aggressive public action to free up the businesses of those now routinely squeezed out of business by monopoly giants.

If we really want a free market, says Khan, let’s free it.

Oh, how the money vultures screamed! “She’s an idiot,” raged the seizing tyrant Barry Diller in idiotic fury.

Because many of the monopoly titans who are otherwise offended by Khan’s wildly popular progressive populism come from the wealthy donor class, they have undue influence. That is why they are bluntly demanding Khan’s head as the price of financial support for Harris’ presidential campaign. Commissioner Khan, they exclaim, simply does not understand “the Washington way of the game.”

Oh yes, she does — and vehemently rejects it. Khan is the first true antitrust champion America has had in years. But will leading Democrats have the courage and integrity to defend her? Or will the power to conduct business as usual be restored?

The answer to that question will be an early measure of Harris’ commitment to economic democracy.

This text was originally published on OtherWords.org.