The rogue agency Trump saved

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Democrats are protecting fraudsters, and the Trump administration has had enough. Last week, Andrew Ferguson, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), called out Democrat governors for not cooperating with his agency’s anti-fraud efforts.

The details are damning. Ferguson says the administration has already uncovered tens of billions of dollars in government fraud, but blue states are refusing to hand over SNAP recipient data that could root out even more.

Ferguson’s message to stonewalling Democrats is blunt: work with us or explain why you won’t. This is what leadership looks like, and it speaks to one of Donald Trump’s most understated achievements: wholly and unequivocally reforming the FTC.

Under Joe Biden, the FTC was turned into a hotbed of left-wing extremism that crusaded against companies and innocent Americans who had fallen out of favor with the administration.

One of the greatest lies ever told was that Joe Biden was a moderate liberal. The man was an unabashed radical, and as president, he set about redefining the relationship between the American citizen and the state. The FTC became ground zero of this revolution.

To lead the agency, Biden appointed Lina Khan, a product of left-wing academia who never found an American business she didn’t want to cut down to size.

Prior to Khan, antitrust policy had been defined by the consumer welfare standard, which held that the feds should only intervene in a merger or other business action if it directly damaged consumers. Khan took a far more scattershot approach, unleashing the FTC on companies she and her fellow leftists simply didn’t like.

Barely an iconic American company was spared her wrath. John Deere was sued for competing for repairs on its own equipment. Pepsi was sued for daring to offer bulk pricing deals to big-box discount stores.

Biden’s FTC held that merely protecting consumers wasn’t enough. Unelected bureaucrats should be a prime mover in the U.S. economy, with well-meaning businesses forced to fall in line and treated punitively if they fell out of favor.

This was more czarist than democratic, a desecration of the American principle that government derives power from the people and must obey the same law it enforces.

Fortunately, Trump seems to prefer the original American Revolution. Upon taking office, he quickly sacked Khan and replaced her with Ferguson, who declared that “instead of doing the bidding of radicals, the FTC ought to be looking out for average Americans.”

The lawsuit against Pepsi was dropped. A suit targeting Grand Canyon University for daring to be Christian was axed.

Antitrust regulators approved a merger between tech companies Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks in the name of lowering prices and competing with abusive Chinese conglomerate Huawei. Top Justice Department official Stanley Woodward told antitrust regulators to stop seeking trials and start seeking settlements with companies.

The spirit of FTC reform spread throughout the government. Businesses are no longer assailed for being businesses. Economic liberty, regulatory restraint, and the national interest are back in play.

And it hasn’t stopped at business. The same FTC that stood up to Khan’s radicalism is now a major player in Vice President J.D. Vance’s anti-fraud push. Whether it’s a merger, a mandate, or a mountain of missing SNAP data, Democrats reflexively resist accountability, right up until they’re forced into it.

Yet it wasn’t until last month that Biden’s FTC revolution was fully, finally reversed. That was when the Supreme Court ruled that—would you believe it?!—FTC commissioners answer to the president and Trump was free to fire those who still clung to Khan’s radical agenda.

The ruling sent a clear message: the Biden days are over. Government is subservient to the people and their elected representatives once again.

There’s still work to do at the FTC, starting with the blue state governors still sitting on the SNAP data. But thanks to Trump’s good sense, businesses once again have the predictability they need to thrive. The revolutionary zeal of Khan and her band of lunatics has been extinguished.

No one would accuse Donald Trump of being boring. But one of his crowning achievements has been to make the FTC a little more boring—while still helping the Americans who need it most.

Chuck Muth is the president of Citizen Outreach.

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