Gail Slater, President Donald Trump’s selection for assistant attorney general for antitrust, “is expected to be combating the scourge of ‘Big-Tech censorship,’” and Democrats couldn't be happier, according to Politico.
Former Yelp official Luther Lowe is one of those Democrats thrilled to see her appointment “because of what he sees as her early openness to constraining Google.”
“I’m a Democrat,” Lowe told Politico, “but I could not be happier in terms of somebody who was on the right side of history now [being] in a place of power.”
Lowe has tried to get antitrust enforcers in both the United States and abroad to take action against Google.
“To those eager for DOJ antitrust cases to include ones against tech giants, Slater was their next great hope,” the outlet said.
In her February confirmation, Slater said that she worried that, with only a handful of big platforms online, “someone can be disappeared from the Internet quite easily.”
It’s an echo of many complaints on the right but the Irish-born American believes “anybody’s viewpoint can be quickly throttled or suppressed when there is market power on back of that.”
The Senate easily voted for her confirmation, 78 to 19.
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Slater allies dismiss the worries. “Claims about the politicization of antitrust enforcement are evergreen,” Roger Alford, Slater’s second-in-command at DOJ told Politico.
“In recent Republican and Democratic administrations, defendants alleged political enforcement in the press, but lost each time they brought those allegations to court.”
“Censorship,” Alford said “is the downstream manifestation of monopoly power.”
As of right now, Slater has inherited several cases of Big Tech antitrust lawsuits from the Biden administration. This includes the one against Apple for allegedly using tricks to keep customers from switching to competitors’ products, like unnecessarily blurring videos sent from Android devices.
But arguably the biggest items on her docket: a pair of cases against Google for violating antitrust laws.
According to Politico, members of the right believed Slater can “bring both sides together.”
“We’re in an uneasy coalition,” Steve Bannon said to Politico at an event. Biden-era FTC Chair Lina Khan, who was also speaking with Bannon and Politico, added, “Gail Slater’s key to that.”
