Big Trou­ble for Google: Trump Names Fight­er to Lead DoJ Antitrust

Big Tech’s cen­sor­ship efforts just hit a yuu­uge road­block.

In a state­ment on Truth Social, incom­ing (and for­mer) Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump announced that he will nom­i­nate com­pe­ti­tion hard­lin­er Gail Slater to lead the Depart­ment of Justice’s Antitrust Divi­sion. Trump argued the appoint­ment was nec­es­sary not just to pre­serve the free mar­ket, but also to pro­tect Amer­i­cans’ lib­er­ties. 

Trump wrote: “Big Tech has run wild for years, sti­fling com­pe­ti­tion in our most inno­v­a­tive sec­tor and, as we all know, using its mar­ket pow­er to crack down on the rights of so many Amer­i­cans, as well as those of Lit­tle Tech! I was proud to fight these abus­es in my First Term, and our Depart­ment of Justice’s antitrust team will con­tin­ue that work under Gail’s lead­er­ship.” 

Monop­o­liza­tion and col­lu­sion in tech mar­kets often pose direct harms to Amer­i­cans’ First Amend­ment lib­er­ties. In 2021, just three tech firms — Ama­zon, Apple and Google — were able to cut off the entire­ty of America’s access to free speech-ori­ent­ed social media plat­form Par­ler. In 2022, Google denied access to Truth Social for over 40 per­cent of Amer­i­can cell phone users. 

Dur­ing Trump’s first admin­is­tra­tion, the Depart­ment of Justice’s Antitrust Divi­sion sued Google for ille­gal­ly monop­o­liz­ing the search engine mar­ket. The case was decid­ed this year: the Court sided with the Antitrust Divi­sion and ruled that Google did, indeed, vio­late antitrust law in monop­o­liz­ing the mar­ket for search engines.

Orig­i­nal­ly an antitrust attor­ney in Ire­land, Slater’s first job after mov­ing to the Unit­ed States was for the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC). She lat­er worked at Fox News, at Roku and as an advi­sor to Trump in his first admin­is­tra­tion. She is cur­rent­ly a pol­i­cy advi­sor to Vice Pres­i­dent-elect JD Vance. Through­out her career, Slater has been a per­sis­tent and aggres­sive crit­ic of Big Tech firms’ anti-com­pet­i­tive con­duct and dis­pro­por­tion­ate mar­ket pow­er.

Slater’s nom­i­na­tion could mark a sharp change in direc­tion for the Antitrust Divi­sion. Under Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, the Divi­sion large­ly refrained from chal­leng­ing Big Tech’s mar­ket pow­er (though it did con­tin­ue the Google suit the Trump admin­is­tra­tion had start­ed). 

Biden’s Antitrust Divi­sion declined to bring enforce­ment actions against either Ama­zon or Meta, even though the inde­pen­dent FTC out­lined damn­ing evi­dence of antitrust vio­la­tions in its own suits against those firms. In 2022, it was revealed that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion had secret­ly coor­di­nat­ed with both Ama­zon and Meta to cen­sor speech crit­i­cal of its poli­cies relat­ed to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Trump’s announce­ment was met with swift praise from crit­ics of Big Tech pow­er.

Antitrust schol­ar and pop­ulist activist Matt Stoller wrote: “This is a very pow­er­ful state­ment that Trump wants to take on big tech.”

Legal schol­ar and Arti­cle III Project Pres­i­dent Mike Davis stat­ed, “Pres­i­dent Trump is mak­ing crys­tal clear he’s con­tin­u­ing what he start­ed: The bipar­ti­san antitrust law-enforce­ment effort to hold account­able the tril­lion-dol­lar Big Tech monopolists–particularly Google–that crush com­pe­ti­tion, shut­ter small busi­ness­es, and cen­sor con­ser­v­a­tives and oth­ers with whom they dis­agree. Pres­i­dent Trump made the per­fect choice with Gail Slater.”

Con­ser­v­a­tives are under attack. Con­tact your rep­re­sen­ta­tives and demand that they con­firm nom­i­nees who will fight Big Tech col­lu­sion and monop­o­liza­tion. If you have been cen­sored, con­tact us using CensorTrack’s con­tact form, and help us hold Big Tech account­able