Dems Rally to Save Lina Khan After Mark Cuban Puts Target on Her Back
Progressive Democrats are rallying around Federal Trade
Commission Chair Lina Khan amid reports that business executives
supporting Kamala Harris want her dismissed.
Billionaire Mark Cuban told Semafor
on Tuesday that “if it were me, I wouldn’t” keep Khan next year,
criticizing the FTC chair for taking on technology firms over artificial
intelligence.
“The bigger picture is, she’s hurting
more than she’s helping,” Cuban said, even while acknowledging her
admirable antitrust efforts to improve pharmacy benefits.
Cuban’s
comments drew a sharp reply from Senator Bernie Sanders, who posted on X
Tuesday afternoon that Cuban “is wrong. Lina Khan is the best FTC Chair
in modern history.
“By taking on corporate greed
& illegal monopolies, Lina is doing an exceptional job preventing
large corporations from ripping-off consumers & exploiting workers,”
Sanders said, thanking Khan “for what you are doing.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed Sanders’s show of support in her own post Wednesday morning.
“Let
me make this clear, since billionaires have been trying to play footsie
with the ticket: Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out
and out brawl. And that is a promise,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her post. “She proves this admin fights for working people. It would be terrible leadership to remove her.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s post alluded to Harris’s recent efforts to court business leaders
and corporate executives and draw them away from Donald Trump. Several
executives have pledged their financial support to the vice president,
even forming a “Business Leaders for Harris” group to raise money. These
include Cuban, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Netflix co-founder
Reed Hastings, and Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express who
now heads a private equity firm.
Two finance executives told the Financial Times
last week that they expected Harris to make more business-friendly
appointments to the FTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both
Khan and Gary Gensler, who heads the SEC, have directed their agencies
to go after corporate consolidation and malfeasance, with Khan making pro-worker reforms and Gensler taking on the cryptocurrency industry. Hoffman has made no secret of his desire to see Khan dismissed, accusing her of “waging war on American business.”
Will
Harris side with business executives and dismiss Khan, or will she
listen to progressives like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and continue
President Biden’s efforts to rein in corporate excess? It all depends on
whose support the vice president thinks is more vital to defeating
Trump.
