The Federal Trade Commission is dropping lawsuits pursued under the tenure of former chair Lina Khan in favor of those more aligned with the new Trump administration‘s priorities.
The new FTC under Chairman Andrew Ferguson has dropped price discrimination and antitrust lawsuits against big companies while launching new ones to investigate alleged bias against conservatives and inquiries into companies promoting Environmental, Social, and Governance efforts.
The Khan’s FTC sued PepsiCo in the final days of the Biden administration, accusing it of price discrimination in favor of big retail outlets such as Walmart. Ferguson dismissed the lawsuit on Thursday, deriding it as a partisan stunt.
“The Biden-Harris FTC rushed to authorize this case just three days before President Trump’s inauguration in a nakedly political effort to commit this administration to pursuing little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law,” he said in a statement. “Taxpayer dollars should not be used for legally dubious partisan stunts. The FTC’s outstanding staff will instead get back to work protecting consumers and ensuring a fair and competitive business environment.”
“The FTC’s outstanding staff will instead get back to work protecting consumers and ensuring a fair and competitive business environment,” Ferguson added.
Khan lamented the move, calling it a “disturbing” action from the FTC in a post on X.
“This lawsuit would’ve protected families from paying higher prices at the grocery store and stopped conduct that squeezes small businesses and communities across America,” she wrote. “Dismissing it is a gift to giant retailers as they gear up to hike prices.”
The same day, Ferguson dropped a lawsuit challenging the largest merger in video game history — a $69 billion purchase of “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Reuters reported. He concluded that challenging the long-settled deal wasn’t in the public’s interest.
Microsoft President Brad Smith celebrated the move as “a victory for players across the country and for common sense in Washington, D.C.”
Ferguson has diverted the FTC’s attention to groups long decried by conservatives, in line with Trump’s vision. One such group is Media Matters, a liberal NGO that makes up a key part of the Democratic Party’s financial and information network. The group has sought since 2004 to delegitimize right-wing media, often launching campaigns targeting advertisers to strip them of funding.
One such campaign against Elon Musk‘s X triggered the investigation on Wednesday. The FTC sent a letter to Media Matters demanding copies of its budgets, documents showing the effects of “harmful” online content on advertisers, and communications with other watchdog groups, according to the New York Times. The investigation is seeking to determine whether the group illegally colluded with advertisers.
Musk has separately sued the group.
Media Matters President Angelo Carusone decried the investigation as an attempt to intimidate critics of Trump.
“Right-wing media figures holding key posts and abusing government power to target critics are two hallmarks of the Trump administration,” he said in a Thursday statement, obtained by the outlet. “Threats won’t work, our mission continues.”
While the FTC didn’t comment on the matter, Ferguson has previously spoken about “colluding” in advertising.
“Drying up the advertising will dry up the idea. So, the risk of an advertiser boycott is a pretty serious risk to the free exchange of ideas,” he said last month.
The FTC launched a wider investigation into Big Tech censorship, especially of conservatives, in February. That investigation looks set to expand after a letter from National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC), who claimed Google was suppressing conservative speech by sending their emails to recipients’ spam folders.
The duo said that during the last election cycle, a “substantial” number of emails sent to supporters were routed to their spam folders, especially when sent to Gmail accounts.
“The matter of whether emails are properly categorized as spam may sound inconsequential, but it is not. If party committees and candidates are unable to communicate with their supporters via email, then they are denied access to a critical channel for communicating essential election-related information that would aid voters in effectively casting their ballots,” they wrote, arguing that Google’s “speech suppression” was directly harming voter turnout.
“The cost of Google’s suppression should therefore be calculated not only in dollars never raised, but in votes never cast,” the chairs added.
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda denied that any bias exists at the company.
“Quite simply: Gmail spam filters are not politically biased. They look at a variety of signals — like whether a user marks an email as spam — and apply equally to all senders, regardless of political ideology,” he told Axios.
The FTC is also now targeting a popular subject of enmity for conservatives — ESG. On Thursday, the FTC was joined by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division in filing an antitrust statement of interest against asset managers BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard over their ESG policies.
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The FTC alleged the trio had engaged in an “anticompetitive conspiracy” to crater coal production as part of an industry-wide “Net Zero” initiative.
“President Donald Trump understands the importance of coal for our energy security and has vowed to fight left-wing ideologues who seek to make us weaker and poorer under the guise of ESG. Today, the Federal Trade Commission carries out this administration’s mission to unleash American energy dominance, protect coal, and stop the left’s attempt to corrupt financial markets with political and social objectives,” Ferguson said in a statement. “These companies allegedly blocked the production of American coal in the name of climate change scaremongering, all so they could take money out of the pockets of American consumers and put it in theirs.”